Cent Eur J Nurs Midw 2013, 4(2):583-588

Subjective well-being and health-related quality of life - the relationship of the two constructs in patients with bronchial asthma

Patrice Popelková^1,*, Elena Gurková^2,3

¹ Department of Nursing and Midwifery, Faculty of Medicine, University of Ostrava

² Faculty of Health Care, University of Presov in Presov

³ Faculty of Health Sciences, The University of Bielsko-Biala

Aim: The goal of the study was to determine the relationship between the health-related quality of life (usually abbreviated as HRQoL) and subjective well-being (usually abbreviated as SWB) of patients with chronic disease, namely bronchial asthma. The focus was on discriminative validity of both constructs.

Methods: The research sample consisted of 316 patients examined at the Pulmonary Clinic of the University Hospital Ostrava. HRQoL was assessed by a short version of the Asthma Quality of Life Questionnaire (Mini AQLQ) and SWB was assessed by the Personal Wellbeing Index (PWI). Pearson's correlation coefficient and linear regression analysis were used for evaluation of dependencies between selected variables. Discriminative validity was explored by examination of differences between HRQoL and SWB relevant to selected clinical variables. Differences in HRQoL and SWB were detected by multi-factor analysis of variance (ANOVA).

Results: The correlations between HRQoL (assessed by the Mini AQLQ) and SWB (assessed by the PWI) are positive and moderate. Perception of asthma control was identified as a significant predictor of both constructs. However, it produced greater variance in the context of HRQoL.

Conclusion: SWB and HRQoL are related but distinct constructs. The results support the notion of HRQoL as a construct based on a larger set of clinical variables as compared to SWB.

Keywords: health-related quality of life, patient, chronic disease, subjective well-being, bronchial asthma

Published: September 30, 2013  Show citation