Quality of Life among Elderly:A Gender Study

This research study is an attempt made to explore the level of quality of life among elderly males and females. The sample consisted of 20 elderly subjects (10 males, 10 females) from urban population in a family setting. The WHO Quality of Life Scale-Brief Version (WHO QOL BREF)(1996) was applied on the subjects to evaluate their quality of life on 4 domains (physical, psychological, social and environmental). T-testing of the scores indicates that there are gender differences in the quality of life of elderly on Physical and Social domains. No gender difference was found on the psychological and environmental domains. Females showed slightly better scores than males on all QOL domains (except the physical domain), though the difference between the two groups was not statistically significant. Overall, no significant gender difference was found in the quality of life among elderly.