A Multidimensional Assessment of Quality of Life of Elderly across Varying Support Systems

The present study was undertaken to perform a multidimensional assessment of Quality of Life of elderly (65 years & above) living in various types of support systems. The study comprised a sample of 400 subjects from Ludhiana city, equally drawn from four support systems viz. elderly living with sons, living with daughters, living alone, and living in institutions. The sample was further divided over the two sexes. Quality of life is a complex, multifaceted construct that requires multiple approaches to develop insights about Quality of Life. Thus, a Quality of Life Profile, senior's version prepared and published by Quality of Life Research Unit, University of Toronto, Canada (2000) was administered to measure the Quality of Life (QOL) of the subjects across various dimensions of QOL and different support systems. This Quality ofLife approach recognizes that there are three different 'Components' of living that contribute to Quality of Life (QOL) of an individual. These are Being, Belonging and Becoming Components. Each of these components has three dimensions. Thus, there are nine specific dimensions/areas that are an integral part of the lives of all individuals. All these need to be considered to assess an individual's Quality of Life (QOL). The spectrum of strong and weak dimensions of the Quality of Life across four support systems was developed which clearly pointed towards Leisure Becoming, Growth Becoming and Community Belonging as the most vulnerable dimensions of Quality ofLife of elderly living across four support systems. It was further observed that the 'Physical Belonging' emerged as the reasonably strong dimension of QOL across majority of support systems. Therefore, culture and region specific inputs were suggested to strengthen the weaker dimensions to ameliorate the QOL of the elderly.