Quality of life domains in the healthy public: A trial investigation using attendants for an annual health checkup.

A trial investigation of subjects gathered for annual health checkups was performed to detect domains of quality of life in the healthy public, and to explore the changes of their demographic characteristics for the possibility of engaging them in health service activities in the community. The eligible 1,096 subjects aged 30-79 years were investigated. The period of this survey was from September to December, 1997. The subjects were questioned using ten quality of life domains which were preliminarily prepared and had been assumed to be most important in the subjects' lives in relation to the order of priority, importance, and satisfaction levels. The first most important domain in both the male and female subjects' lives was personal health, followed by relationships with family, though the mean importance scores for their personal health and relationships with family were almost equivalent. The mean scores for work abruptly decreased in males over 60 years of age. Also, the first large and the second relatively small principal components were extracted through principal components analysis. The proposed ten domains of quality of life are most likely valid and reliable in terms of the results analyzed and the comparison with a referred study. Relationships with family is an effective cue for health service activities in the community, and the significance of work on quality of life in the healthy public will have to be taken into account separately, especially in males.