The Importance of Having Good Health Condition in Self-Assessment of the Quality of Life. The Example of Senior Students of the Balearic Islands

This paper is part of a widest study about quality of life of older people who are enrolled in a university programme for seniors. This part belongs to a the first phase, focused on the assessment of the quality of life of senior students enrolled into the first year of the Diploma Sènior (a three years degree) of the Open university for Seniors (UOM), educational programme offered by the University of the Balearic Islands (UIB) to people over 50 years. This paper shows the results of the subjective perception of the quality of life of older people enrolled in the first year degree, during three different and correlative academic years (2009-10, 2010-11 and 2011-12) of UOM. Our main goal is to understand and assess which are components related to their quality of life, that they give more importance or consideration for their own quality of life. The outcomes show that a huge majority, a 93%, thinks that the most important component is "to have good health" and only a 0.8% of the sample perceived their quality of life as bad or low.