[Quality of life of professors of higher education community institutions in the state of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil].

Quality of life is the subjects' perception of their status in society, permeated by culture, values and everyday life and with a view to their life goals and expectations as well as the ways of thinking about life. The study investigated the quality of life of professors of higher education community institutions that have been in operation for more than 40 years and have more than ten thousand students in the State of Rio Grande do Sul. The research, with a qualitative-quantitative cross-sectional approach was conducted in August and September 2011 using a professional profile questionnaire and the WHOQQL-BREF questionnaire, in which 203 professors participated, namely 17% of all the professors in the three institutions analyzed. When the quality of life rate was analyzed according to the teachers' education, the 22 specialists scored highest in the psychological field (72.1 ± 3.1) and lowest in the social field (69.3 ± 4.4). Among the 125 masters and the 43 PhD's, the highest scores were found in the physical domain (74.8 ± 1.3 and 75.7 ± 2.1, respectively) and the lowest in the environmental field (69.4 ±1.0 and 70.8 ± 1.8). The conclusion reached was that the quality of life of the professors was considered good in the fields analyzed. There was no significant statistical difference among them.