Measuring the Quality of Life and Determinants of the Urban Elderly: A Subjective Perspective

—This study aims to measure the quality of life in the elderly and analyze the determinant of quality of life in an urban area. The study was conducted on 401 elderly who lived in 20 Kelurahan (sub-subdistrict) in the urban area of Medan City, North Sumatera, Indonesia. Quality of life (QoL) was measured using translated OPQOL-35. Whereas to find out determinant of the quality of life in elderly and predict it is done by ordinal regression analysis. The study discovered that elderly in an urban area have medium QoL (mean score is 72,04). The results showed that the two lowest QoL domain scores of the elderly are the financial circumstances domain (62.78), and the health domain (63.49). Meanwhile, the two highest QoL domain scores of the elderly care home and neighbor domain (81.3) and social relationship domain (80.06). Furthermore, ordinal regression analysis showed that the social demographic variables which determine of QOL of elderly in urban areas are 1) Overall Quality of Life Perception; 2) Marital Status; 3) Health Status; 4) Level of Education; 5) Proximity of house with family; 6) Using the telephone for communicating; 7) Involved in community activities, and 8) Know neighbors. All independent variables are significant in p-value < 0.05 and p-value < 0.01.