Factors influencing quality of life among the elderly: An approach using logistic regression

BACKGROUND: Improving the physical, psychological, and social factors in the elderly significantly increases the QoL(1) among them. This study aims to identify the crucial factors for predicting QoL among the elderly using statistical methods. MATERIALS AND METHODS: In this study, 980 samples related to the elderly with favorable and unfavorable QoL were investigated. The elderly's QoL was investigated using a qualitative and self-assessment questionnaire that measured the QoL among them by five Likert spectrum and independent factors. The Chi-square test and eta coefficient were used to determine the relationship between each predicting factor of the elderly's QoL in SPSS V 25 software. Finally, we used the Enter and Forward LR methods to determine the correlation of influential factors in the presence of other variables. RESULTS: The study showed that 20 variables gained a significant relationship with the quality of life of the elderly at P < 0.05. The study results showed that the degree of dependence (P = 0.03), diabetes mellitus (P = 0.03), formal and informal social relationships (P = 0.01 and P = 0.02), ability to play an emotional role (P = 0.03), physical performance (P = 0.01), heart diseases and arterial blood pressure (P = 0.02), and cancer (P = 0.01) have favorable predictive power in predicting the QoL among the elderly. CONCLUSION: Attempts to identify and modify the important factors affecting the elderly's QoL have a significant role in improving the QoL and life satisfaction in this age group people. This study showed that the statistical methods have a pleasant capability to discover the factors associated with the elderly's QoL with high performance in this regard.