Quality of Life Research

One of the greatest challenges of quality of life (QoL) research is the conceptual definition of quality of life. Some believe that QoL is among the most inconsistent concepts in the literature, and very often a reader needs to see and decide how the author(s) defines QoL. Throughout the years, there have been several significant attempts to define QoL, and the most important definitions have been based in the World Health Organization’s (WHO) definition of health in 1948: “a state of complete physical, mental, and social well-being not merely the absence of disease.” This definition is important because it signals the shift from a disease-specific perception that an individual’s health is dependent on the presence or absence of a disease to a more dialectical perception ...