Quality of life: approaches, concepts and assessment

Abstract

Despite the great social relevance, the theme quality of life presents theoretical/methodological inaccuracies, fact that makes difficult the investigation, the dialogue among the different areas that deal with the theme, and mainly, the application of the knowledge produced in the improvement of the population's quality of life. In order to contribute for a clarification of the concept, this study had as objective, through the reading, discussion and analysis of the specialized literature, to present the main approaches, concepts and proposals of classification and assessment of quality of life. It was verified that the approaches and conceptualizations about quality of life are presented in the literature in a varied way and, many times, divergent. The lack of theoretical consensus makes many researches to use concepts as health, well-being and life style, as synonyms for quality of life. New approaches in epistemological study of the topic are necessary as well as studies analyzing the quality of life in times of intervention are needed.