Quality of Life and Multilevel Contact Network Structures Among Healthy Adults in Taiwan: Online Participatory Cohort Study

BACKGROUND: People’s quality of life diverges on their demographics, socioeconomic status, and social connections. OBJECTIVE: By taking both demographic and socioeconomic features into account, we investigated how quality of life varied on social networks using data from both longitudinal surveys and contact diaries in a year-long (2015-2016) study. METHODS: Our 4-wave, repeated measures of quality of life followed the brief version of the World Health Organization Quality of Life scale (WHOQOL-BREF). In our regression analysis, we integrated these survey measures with key time-varying and multilevel network indices based on contact diaries. RESULTS: People’s quality of life may decrease if their daily contacts contain high proportions of weak ties. In addition, people tend to perceive a better quality of life when their daily contacts are face-to-face or initiated by others or when they contact someone who is in a good mood or someone with whom they can discuss important life issues. CONCLUSIONS: Our findings imply that both functional and structural aspects of the social network play important but different roles in shaping people’s quality of life.