Quality of life of elderly people in a third age group <br><b>Abstract in English<\b>

Abstract

AIMS: To describe the quality of life of elderly people in a group of elderly. METHODS: a prospective, cross-sectional, quantitative study was conducted at the Centro de Extensão Universitária Vila Fátima from Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio Grande do Sul. The subjects were fifteen elderly people from a third age group, participant of a social group. Data collection was done with the instruments WHOQOL-OLD (World Health Organization Quality of Life instrument for older adults) and WHOQOL-BREF (reduced World Health Organization Quality of Life instrument). A structured questionnaire on sociodemographic characteristics of the elderly subjects was also applied to characterize the study population. RESULTS: analyzing the contribution of different domains in the elderly's quality of life, it was observed that the six domains together reached a score of 83.6 and differed about the individual contribution. The facet that contributed most to the quality of life was the functioning of sensory, followed by the facets death and dying and social participation. Next came the autonomy and intimacy, and, with lower scores, the facet past, present and future activities. CONCLUSIONS: it is important to be engaged with the quality of life of elderly people, searching for alternatives for a healthy life, considering the third age group as an option to be explored. Quality of life is an indicator of health and the WHOQOL-OLD questionnaire is an instrument that can suggest interventions to improve the quality of life of the elderly population.