1. What is it and how is it measured?
Quality of Life…
What is it and how is it measured?

2. Concept of Quality of Life
Quality of life in simple terms means: “How good is your life for you?”
The answer of this question is the measure of a person’s quality of life.
It is important to recognize that every person’s life is different, and thus the way in which everyone experiences and the expectations of a quality of life will be different.

3. The Three Domain of Quality of Life.
BEING:
Physical = body and health, access to health care, nutrition, hygiene, sex life
Psychological = Your thoughts and feelings, education levels and access to education, satisfaction with self, freedom.
Spiritual = Your beliefs and values, freedom of religion and culture, hope, sense of purpose and meaning to your life.

4. BELONGING
Physical = Where you spend your time and live, cleanliness, crime rates, noise, pollution, personal possessions, privacy.
Social = The people around you and access to people who you care about, culture (friends, family, coworkers, , texting, blogs)
Community = Access to community resources, internet, a sense of place within your community, employment, going to school, community events

5. BECOMING
Practical = the things you do on a daily basis and how much you enjoy them. (work, school, volunteer work, social sevices)
Leisure = The things you do for fun and enjoyment and access to those things (clubs, groups, teams, vacations, events, TV…)
Growth = The things you do to cope with change and technology, improving yourself, solving problems, changes in your life or state of health/age

6. How do you determine Quality of Life?
Rating quality of life is extremely subjective, meaning the way we feel about our lives is personal and we all have different expectation from our life.
ie: A typical 13 year old girl would love to go shopping for a day at her favorite mall.
A typical 30ish year old Social teacher would rather walk over hot coals that go shopping for a day. He would much rather go fishing because that increases his quality of life. Shopping, actually decreases it.

7. This ‘subjective-ness’ makes rating one’s quality of life difficult to do as there are a variety of things that can effect how we rate our lives:
Age
Sex
Race
Religion
Culture
Income level
Exposure to ….
Mobility
Expectations
Education levels
Health
Peace or war
Environmental health

8. Your Task:
Create a 3 point rubric to rate quality of life. Use at least 5 criteria, and identify the difference between a 1, 2, and 3.
Score your life according to your rubric.
Use a friend’s rubric and see how you score.