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RESEARCH PRODUCT

Health-Related Quality of Life in Old Age: How to Define it, How to Study?

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Quality of life, in the words of Alvan R. Feinstein is something like intelligence. “Everyone knows it exists and thinks they can identify it in various ways, but we may not be able to evoke universal agreement on what it is” (Feinstein, 1987, p. 639). This is also true of quality of life when we consider it from a health point of view. The concept itself seems to be perfectly useful, but at the same time there is something very confusing and even irritating about it. What are we talking about when we talk about health-related quality of life? Do we really need this concept if we think of all the countless number of terms and concepts that refer to different dimensions of health-related phenomena? And if we do need it, for what purposes?