Environmental and health-related quality of life: Conceptual and methodological similarities

The recent revival of interest in the concept of quality of life by academics in both the social and medical sciences and amongst politicians has focused attention on the continuing debate about the definition, measurement and utilisation of quality of life. In particular, the need amongst regulatory and financial authorities—both in the health sector and in local government—to know about the potential impact of intervention has encouraged further interest in the use of quality of life measures to assist resource allocation and assessing the impact of policy decisions. In this paper it is argued that whilst such measures may be the ultimate goal of research, this can only be constructed on a fuller understanding of quality of life measures of current conditions and the relationship between components of life quality. A conceptual framework is developed to show the relationship between the way that quality of life, in both environmental and health-related studies, has been conceived and measured. The strong similarities in both respects are discussed, pointing to the need for heightened interdisciplinary dissemination of research methods and assessments.