Poster Presentation
Wednesday, July 11, 2007
9:00 AM - 9:45 AM
Wednesday, July 11, 2007
2:45 PM - 3:30 PM
Objective, subjective, global quality of life, and the determinants among junior high school students in Taiwan
Shu Yu, PhD, RN1, Lee-Lan Yen, ScD2, Chun-Hsia Huang, MS, RN3, and Ching-Ling Lan, MS, student, RN1. (1) School of Nursing, National Yang-Ming University, Taipei, Taiwan, (2) Institute of Health Policy and Management, National Taiwan University, Taipei, Taiwan, (3) School of Nursing, Municipal Zhong-Xiao Elementary School; National Yang-Ming University, Taipei, Taiwan
| Learning Objective #1: assess adolescent’s health-related quality of life (HQOL) from objective, subjective, as well global perspectives and then realize adolescents’ objective, subjective, as well global HQOL. |
| Learning Objective #2: realize adolescents’ objective, subjective, as well as global HQOL and to examine the determinants of global HQOL. |
There is specific consideration for measuring health related quality of life (HQOL) in different life-span stage. HQOL is a major health concern for adolescents which should be emphasized. A total of 1394 subjects (male 701 and female 648) who were randomly selected from fourteen junior high schools in northern five Counties and Cities, Taiwan participated in this study. In this study, we described junior high school students’ objective, subjective and global HQOL. In exploring the determinants, social network structure and function (including real world and virtual world) were to be mediate variables; personal, family, school, and community characteristic were to be independent variables to identify the determinants of global HQOL (objective HQOL multiply by subjective HQOL). The main findings were as follow: (1) Objective, subjective, as well as global HQOL all revealed moderate high degrees. A significant relationship existed between objective HQOL and subjective HQOL (r = 0.574, p < 0.001). (2) Among four domains of global HQOL, the highest score was noted for “social domain”; whereas the lowest score was in “psychological domain”. (3) Multiple stepwise regression analyses on global HQOL indicating eleven variables (global family and social support, subject-father cohesion, family economic status, gender, subject-peer cohesion, subject-mother cohesion, only child or not, numbers of beds/ per ten thousands population, the ratio of teacher vs. students, numbers of class, and subject-teacher cohesion) could be singled out as significant factors and accounted for 23.91% of the variance. (4) Global family and social support was the most important predictor which accounted for 13.4% of the variance. Four types of cohesion (subject-farther, subject-mother, subject-peer, and subject-teacher) played the secondly important predictor and accounted for 5.2% of the variance. Based on our findings, we provide concrete suggestions in health and education practice, administration, as well as future studies to improve adolescents’ HQOL.