Quality of life in adolescents

 Quality of life is increasingly viewed as an important consideration in research on adolescents' health.
Accordingly, several multidimensional instruments for the measurement of quality of life have been developed for the purpose of examining the impact of disease and chronic illness on various life domains that are considered to be of importance to adolescents. Quality of life instruments have also been used in population health surveys of adolescents to examine the impact of health policies and health promotion initiatives. These instruments typically consist of subscales that represent life domains that are of particular importance to children and adolescents, including: (a) perceptions of self (e.g., self-esteem), (b) relationships with friends and family, (c) school experiences, and (d) the living environment. In addition, some instruments include questions that specifically assess physical and mental health status, or physical, emotional, and social functioning.
Some researchers have developed conceptual models describing the relationships between these various life domains in children and adolescents. For example, based on their qualitative study of adolescents' quality of life developed a conceptual model with the domains of “social relationships,” “sense of self,” and “environment” as important contributing conditions of adolescents‟ global QOL. This model provided the basis for the development of the Youth Quality of Life Instrument.
Principal components analysis was used to provide support for the use of an overall score posited a model that consists of similar life domains of importance to children and adolescents (satisfaction with family, peers, school, self, and living environment). However, in contrast to viewing these life domains as contributing conditions for quality of life, his “Multidimensional Life Satisfaction Model” is based on the theoretical premise that the life domains constitute dimensions that arise from general life satisfaction. He accordingly developed the Multidimensional Students' Life Satisfaction Scale (MSLSS) based on an indirect reflective measurement structure wherein general life satisfaction is specified as a second-order factor that accounts for the correlations among the five life domains.
In consideration of the theoretical and empirical developments pertaining to the quality of life of adolescents, we designed a test of the indirect reflective measurement structure of the MSLSS and of an alternative spurious model of the relationships among adolescents‟ satisfaction with various domains of life, global QOL, and health status. We selected this instrument because the developers used factor analysis techniques for item selection and to validate its factor structure (construct validity), and because an indirect reflective measurement structure for this instrument was purportedly substantiated by at least three confirmatory factor analyses. In addition, the MSLSS is an example of an instrument that measures satisfaction with life domains in a manner that is not contaminated by items measuring physical and mental health status.