A comparative study to assess the quality of life among senior citizens residing at homes and old age homes of Pune city

Abstract

The World Health Organization describes QOL as a broad-ranging concept that incorporates individual's physical health, psychological state, level of independence, social relationships, personal beliefs and their association to salient features of the environment. There is absence of information on quality of life among elderly Indian due to the absence of an appropriate QOL measure that would cover the basic concept and definition of health comprehensibly. The present study was aimed to compare quality of life between senior citizens residing in family or old-age home. A total of 100 senior citizens were participated in quantitative descriptive study. Quality of score was calculated using a questionnaire. All the participants in family group were in age group of 65-80 whereas 14% of the participants have age more than 80 years. There was no difference in number of female and male participants in both groups. All family group participants had good score while the other group participants have average score. There was significant difference in overall quality of score between both groups (P=0.000). Senior citizens residing in family have better quality of life than residing in old-age home.