dc.description.abstract | Introduction Those aged 60 and over are now the fastest growing population in the world. Quality of life (QOL) is an important part of the wellbeing of the senior citizens. This study is one of the very few large-scaled reports using the CASP-19 in Taiwanese population. Objective First, we aimed to study factors associated with QOL among community dwelling elderly in Taiwan. Second, we aimed to examine the associated relationships between health status, social capital, and QOL in elderly. Materials and Methods This study is the cross-sectional part of a hospital-based, prospective cohort study in Taipei City, Taiwan in 2010. Our sample included 697 elders from the 3680 examinees of the free annual Senior Citizens Health Examination. Participants were interviewed with a detailed questionnaire. The main outcome was QOL, predictor variables included socio-demographic characteristics, health risk factors and social capital. We defined a CASP-19 score below 39 (mean) as poor QOL. We stratify the sample by gender. Profile analysis comprised of the tests of difference among subgroups, parallelism for interaction among subgroups, and flatness for difference the domain scores of the CASP scale. We also assessed relationship among health status, social capital and QOL by using structural equation modeling (SEM). Results In these community-dwelling Taiwanese senior citizens, we observed that advanced age (aOR:1.08), female gender (aOR:1.97), education under junior high school (aOR:2.73), barely enough income (aOR:2.90), having fewer opportunities (aOR:4.50) and satisfactions (aOR:2.11) than 30s, lived in acceptable environment (aOR:1.68), having none intimate relationships (aOR:7.88), having none family relationships (aOR:5.33), having none friends (aOR:3.76) were all associated with QOL. QOL were mainly associated age, gender, education, economic status, opportunities and satisfactions, living environment, intimate relationships. Males and females did not differ in most predictors. In the profile analysis, different subgroups differed in four domains, parallelism was observed among gender (p=0.0908). In the SEM, health status affect QOL only through social capital. Conclusion Among community-dwelling older people in Taiwan, health should pass through social capital as a intermediate and indirect influence on QOL. In addition to other risk factors, social capital are strong indicator of people’s general well-being. | en |