Life Quality and Physical Activity of Ukrainian Residents

IntroductionThe total number of elderly people is over 680 million. The relative number of elderly people in Poland is 13.6%, Belarus - 13.9%, Romania - 14.9%, Norway and Ukraine - 15.3%, Netherlands - almost 16%, France - 16.7%, Spain - 17.2%, Portugal, Greece and Italy - 20%. Thus the supporting of independence, the increasing of social activity level, improving of life quality of elderly people is actually nowadays. Ideas useful for solving of physical, psychological and social problems of elderly citizens have significant interest [7]. Life quality is the central object in different scientific areas. The life quality is the integral part of population and epidemiological studies. As a result, there are about a hundred definitions of this conception [9, 10, 15]. Some of them have the general character - "the awareness of individual well-being", "the satisfaction or dissatisfaction with life" or "happiness or unhappiness" [4, 16]. However life quality is not comparable with the health, lifestyle, life satisfaction or mental condition [3, 12]. According proposed concepts, life quality consist of physical health, psychological state, level of independence, social relationships, personal beliefs and implementation of all these factors according environmental conditions [2, 3]. The shift of emphasis to positive approaches can be observed in academic writings. The negative paradigm of aging is focused on poor health, loneliness, inability to make decisions, disability, poverty, social exclusion, decreasing of intellectual development. Aging is considered as a natural state of a living organism that in public dimension is accompanied by changes in social roles and the appearance of new opportunities for personal realization. The basic needs of elderly people include health preservation, access to health services, active communication, performance of socially useful tasks, intellectual development, stable relationships and life.The characteristics of elderly Ukrainians' life quality and its' relation with physical activity was the aim of investigation.Material & methods150 female (age 65.2 ± 4.3 years) took part in investigation. Respondents were studied in the University of Third Age (the structural part of Lviv State University of Physical Culture). Among respondents 52% were in official or civil marriage, 25.3% were widows, 8% were single, 14% were divorced. Most respondents had higher education (80.7%), 19.3% had secondary or incomplete higher special technical education. 73.3% of respondents lived with their families; 26% regularly take care about family members (grandchildren, parents, etc.). Only 3.3% of respondents described their living conditions as bad or indicated about bad or very bad financial situation.Life quality was scored with the help of MOS SF-36 questionnaire [5, 18]. It was investigated according several scales:1. Physical Functioning (PF) - subjective assessment of daily physical activity level; the higher is the score, the more physical active is respondent.2. Physical Role Functioning (RF) - the evaluation of their daily activities and its' impact on health; the higher index indicate about the less limitation in daily activities by the physical condition;3. Bodily Pain (BP) - determine the impact of pain on daily activity; the higher index indicates about the less limitation due to pain.4. Vitality (VT) - evaluation of vitality over the past four weeks; the higher score suggest about high level of energy and vitality.5. Social Activity (SA) - the evaluation of respondent's relation with other during the past four weeks; low score indicate about significant limitation of social contacts due to the deteriorating emotional and physical states.6. Mental Health (MH) - the characteristics of respondents' mental state; the higher is the score, the better mood had respondent during last month.7. Emotional Role Functioning (RE) - the influence of emotional problems on respondents' daily activities. …