Farquhar M
Department of General Practice and Primary Care, Medical College of St Bartholomew's Hospital, London, England.
J Adv Nurs. 1995 Sep;22(3):502-8. doi: 10.1046/j.1365-2648.1995.22030502.x.
Quality of life is of central concern in evaluative research; improved quality of life is probably the most desirable outcome of all health care policies. However, definitions of quality of life are as numerous and inconsistent as the methods of assessing it. Stemming from a larger piece of work looking at the definition and measurement of quality of life, this paper highlights the lack of a consensus definition of quality of life by means of a taxonomy of definitions that emerge from the literature. The paper describes and gives examples of four main types of definition which make up the taxonomy: global (type I); component (type II); focused (type III); and combination definitions (type IV). In addition, an outline of factors influencing the definition of quality of life is given, and an alternative strategy for both defining and measuring the concept (the use of lay definitions) is suggested.
生活质量是评估性研究的核心关注点；生活质量的提高可能是所有医疗保健政策最理想的结果。然而，生活质量的定义与评估方法一样繁多且不一致。本文源于一项关于生活质量定义与测量的大型研究工作，通过对文献中出现的定义进行分类，突出了生活质量缺乏共识定义这一问题。本文描述了构成该分类法的四种主要定义类型并给出示例：整体型（I类）；组成型（II类）；聚焦型（III类）；以及组合型定义（IV类）。此外，还概述了影响生活质量定义的因素，并提出了一种定义和测量该概念的替代策略（使用外行定义）。
