Gender differences in health-related quality of life among the elderly: The role of objective functional capacity and chronic conditions

Francesc Orfila, Montserrat Ferrer, Rosa Lamarca, Cristian Tebe, Antonia Domingo-Salvany and Jordi Alonso

Social Science & Medicine, 2006, vol. 63, issue 9, 2367-2380

Abstract: Although worse Health-Related Quality of Life (HRQL) among women has been widely described, it remains unclear whether this is due to differential reporting patterns, or whether there is a real difference in health status. The objective of this study was to evaluate to what extent gender differences in HRQL among the elderly might be explained by differences in performance-based functional capacity and chronic conditions, using the conceptual model of health outcomes as proposed by Wilson and Cleary. Data are from a cross-sectional home survey of 872 surviving individuals from an elderly cohort representative of Barcelona's general population. Complete valid data for these analyses were obtained from 62% of the subjects (n=544). The evaluation included the Nottingham Health Profile (NHP), a generic measure of HRQL; three performance-based functional capacity tests (balance, chair-stand, and walking tests); and a standardized list of self-reported chronic conditions. A series of multiple linear regression models were built with the total NHP score as the dependent variable, with gender, socio-demographic information, performance-based functional capacity and chronic conditions included sequentially, as independent variables. Women (65.4%) showed worse results than men on HRQL (mean of NHP total score 28.3Â vs 16.7, p

Keywords: Chronic; conditions; Elderly; Functional; capacity; Health-related; quality; of; life; Gender; differences; Nottingham; Health; Profile; Spain (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2006
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (10)

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