engleski

Subjective Quality of Life in Croatia

To assess the population health status and quality of life Croatian Ministry of health and Andrija Stampar School of Public Health conducted in 2003 the Croatian Adult Health Survey project. The survey included a number of questions concerning respondent’ s demographic characteristics, living conditions, and relevant habits and behaviors. This paper presents the results on subjective quality of life in Croatia. Survey comprised 9, 068 individuals from all regions ; 2, 888 men and 6, 180 women. The questionnaire was administered face-to-face to respondents in their home by trained public health nurses. Subjective quality of life (SQOL) was measured through single question “ How do you satisfied with your life as a whole?” on a scale from 1 to 10 where 1 represent complete dissatisfaction and 10 maximal satisfaction. Original results were transformed in the standardized form-percentage of scale maximum (%SM) which converts Likert scale data into a range from 0 to 100%. Croatian mean score for the subjective quality of life was 56.96 %SM (SD=26.06). Women scored in average 57.31 % SM and men scored 56.22% SM. Although men reported slightly lower SQOL the difference was not significant (p = 0.064). This findings shows that life satisfaction of Croatian adult population is below the proposed level for the Western normative range (70-80%SM), also below normative level for the non-Western normative range (60-80%SM). Further analysis revealed that there was significant difference in SQOL between people with different economic status. According to self reported economic status people who rate themselves as much better and somewhat better than average has the highest SQOL (81.23 %SM and 74.42 %SM respectively). People who said they are average by economic status scored 63.44 %SM and people who rate themselves somewhat worse and much worse than average shows low level of SQOL (50.75 %SM and 38.99 %SM respectively).

quality of life; Croatia

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