Revista de prevención y atención de la salud

Abstracto

Quality of life of the Tunisian population: a general analysis based on the SF-36

Safa Salem

Background: The SF-36 is the instrument for measuring patients' health-related quality of life (HRQoL) in many clinical and national studies to describe the health status of populations, by obtaining internationally comparable data on health status. Objectives: This study aimed to obtain population norms for the Tunisian version of the SF-36 and to assess the association between socio-HRQoL scores with demographic characteristics of the Tunisian population. Methods: Personal interviews were conducted for a cross-sectional study in 2005 to collect socio-demographic and environmental variables as well as self-reported quality of life. A representative sample of 6543 people aged 35-70 years was selected. Results: All scores had a high level of internal consistency reliability coefficient. HRQoL score levels were associated with socio-demographic characteristics and decreased with increasing age. The physical and mental component summary means were 53 ± 8 for men and 47.7 ± 10 for women. Conclusions: This study was the first to address the Tunisian general population. This study shed light on factors associated with HRQoL in the Tunisian context.