Quality Of Life And Its Influencing Factors Among The Elderly In Shandong Province

Objectives: This study was aimed at understanding the overall level of the elderly's quality of life in Shandong Province, analyzing the influencing factors of the elderly's quality of life, developing some suggestions for improving their quality of life, and providing basis for promoting the Healthy Aging.Methods: The elderly aged over 60 years who dwelled in Shandong Province were taken as study subjects. And total 985 respondents were sampled from 6 cities of Shandong Province by using multi-stage stratified random sampling methods. The elderly's quality of life was measured by SF-36 which was tested by validity and reliability analysis. SF-36 was consisted of 36 items reflected 8 dimensionalities: Physical Functioning(PF),Role Physical(RP),Body Pain(BP), General Health(GH), Vitality(VT), Social Functioning(SF), Role Emotional(RE),Mental Health(MH). A self-designed questionnaire was used to collect the elderly's general characteristics, including demographic characteristics, health status, and the need of pension services. The face to face household survey was carried out by investigators during data collection. The basic characteristics of study subject were described by percentage, mean, standard deviation and so on. Independent-Sample t test, Chi-Square test, One-Way analysis of variance, Multiple Linear Regression, Ordinal Logistic Regression analysis and structural equation analysis were used to analyze the influencing factors of quality of life.Results: A total of 985 valid questionnaires were completed, and the rate of valid was 96.8%. Of these 986 respondents, male were 497, and female were 488. In this study, the Cronbach's ? coefficient of all items of SF-36 was 0.70, the Spearman-Brown coefficient of split-half reliability was 0.753; in exploratory factor analysis, 2 common factors were extracted using principal component analysis methods, and their cumulative rate of total variance explained was 60.165%. By t test, single factor analysis of variance, multiple factors regression analysis and structural equation analysis, eight influencing factors of the elderly's quality of life were screened, which were gender, age, educational level, family living scale, way of pension, annual income, living self-care ability and life satisfaction. By structural equation analysis, biological factors on the quality of life had negative impact(r =-0.36,P < 0.001), and economic factors factors on the quality of life had positive impact(r = 0.24, P < 0.001), and the path coefficient of demographic factors on the quality of life was not obvious.Conclusions: In ShanDong province, the elderly's quality of life was at a high level.The influencing factors of the elder's quality of life were gender, age, educational level, family living scale, way of pension, annual income, living self-care ability and life satisfaction.Demographic factors(age, education, etc.) situation had no direct impact on the quality of life,and it affected the quality of life by economic factors indirectly.Economic factors had positive effecton the quality of life questionnaire scores,and biological factors had negative impact.