Quality of life concepts, measurement and challenges

Abstract

Defining and measuring quality of life (QOL) is currently at the forefront of the various fields of science. It is now in vogue to try to understand the pursuit of happiness and high QOL. The concept of QOL is widely discussed by specialists of various fields of science nowadays. Besides psychology, which has a long tradition of researching QOL, extensive contributions to this subject come from economics, starting with the work of R. A. Easterlin (2001; 2003), B. S. Frey & A. Stutzer (2002) and R. Layard (2005). In most of these studies QOL is analyzed as the concept which has the objective and subjective (self-assessed) dimensions and can be measured at the level of individuals or society. In spite of the great interest in the good life and many attempts to measure it, QOL remains a contested concept, enjoying a wide variety of definitions. It is a very broad and inherently multidimensional concept. According to M. Rapley (2003), there are “serious ethical, conceptual and philosophical difficulties” involved in studying QOL, which researches must take very seriously. For this reason, firstly, we focus on the QOL conceptualization in this paper. [...]