Correlation between functional disability and quality of life among rural elderly in Anhui province, China: a cross-sectional study

OBJECTIVE: We aimed to explore the correlation between functional disability and quality of life (QoL). And exploring the interaction of functional disability, basic demographic characteristics and health-related information on QoL among the rural elderly in Anhui Province. METHODS: This study used multi-stage stratified cluster sampling in rural Anhui Province from January to July 2018 to conduct a cross-sectional survey of older adults who met the inclusion criteria. The Five-Dimensional European Quality Of Health Scale (EQ-5D) and the WHO Disability Assessment Schedule (WHODAS2.0) scale were used to evaluate the QoL and functional disability, and the basic demographic characteristics of the survey subjects were also collected. Using binary logistic and Classification and regression tree model (CART) models to analyze the data, explore the relationship between functional disability and QoL in the elderly. RESULTS: A total of 3491 older adults were included in the survey, and 3336 completed the entire survey, with an effective response rate of 95.56%. After adjusting for covariables, those who had limited in dimension of mobility (AOR=2.243, 95%CI: 1.743-2.885), getting along (AOR=1.615, 95%CI: 1.173-2.226), life activities (AOR=2.494, 95%CI:1.928-3.226), and social participation (AOR=2.218, 95%CI: 1.656-2.971) had a lower QoL. However, the dimension of cognition (AOR=0.477, 95%CI: 0.372-0.613) is a protective factor for QoL. Additionally, we also observe that 96.3% of those who were unemployed and limited in both mobility and life activities dimensions had a lower QoL, but among those who were robust in both mobility and social participation dimensions and not suffer from chronic diseases, 56.3% had a higher QoL. CONCLUSIONS: Our findings indicate that special attention should be paid to the elderly who are unemployed, have limited in cognition, getting along, social participation, mobility, life activities and cognition robust to improve their QoL. This research is of great significance for formulating targeted strategies and measures to improve the QoL for rural elderly. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12889-021-12363-7.