Elderly Health Journal

Introduction: Recent medical and health care improvement caused a remarkable increase in humans' life expand and subsequent increase in aging population. Beside life expectancy, quality of life is at the same importance, so the study aimed to explore the relation between quality of life and lifestyle among older adults in Yazd.

Methods: The cross-sectional study was carried out on 270 elderly people over 60 years old. A cluster random sampling was used to recruit the participant from 10 selected clusters in the Yazd city with at least 27 participants from each cluster. 12 item Short Form Health Survey and Iranian Elderly Lifestyle Questionnaire was used for data collection. Data analyzed with descriptive frequency distribution and also χ², and Pearson correlation coefficient tests using SPSS software.

Results: The mean score of quality of life was 69.06 ± 20.97 (range 0-100) and the mean score of lifestyle was 161.91 ± 13.95 (range 42-211). Quality of life and lifestyle had statistically significant relation with age, sex, education level, marriage status, retirement status, having job, income source, digestive problems, depression, joint pain, osteoporosis, hypertension, fall and sleep disorder. There was also a direct association between lifestyle and quality of life.

Conclusion: Results indicated that most of the participants are at a desirable level of lifestyle and quality of life. However quality of life is in relation with some demographic factors and chronic conditions that must be addressed in interventional programs aimed at increasing the quality of life among aging population.