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The quality of life of Palestinians living in chronic conflict: assessment and determinants

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Abstract

This study assessed the quality of life (QoL) of Palestinians living in conditions of chronic conflict and examined its determinants. An adapted World Health Organization quality of life (WHOQoL-Bref) instrument was used in a representative sample of 1,008 adults. Factor analysis and multiple regression were conducted to determine associations between demographic and socioeconomic characteristics and scores of extracted principal determinants, and estimated overall and domain-specific QoL scores. Men, older persons and those less educated reported lower QoL than their counterparts. Negative associations were also found with higher distress and fear levels, and lower financial and freedom status. The chronic and entrenched conflict over generations resulted in lower QoL for the population of the Occupied Palestinian Territory.

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Notes

  1. For comparison purposes, data from Portugal were added to the WHO IFT countries; centers with small sample sizes were omitted, and the three centers in India were pooled together. In addition, cases in the WHO IFT where age or gender was missing and where the age was less than 15 years were also deleted. The resultant sample size from the remaining 17 countries was 11,049 respondents. Finally, given the differences in age and gender distributions between the PQoL study sample and samples used in the WHO IFT, the WHOQoL-Bref mean domain scores were based on age- and gender-adjusted estimates—the WHO Standard [34] was used as reference population.

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Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank the World Health Organization–Eastern Mediterranean Regional Office (WHO-EMRO), for funding the study and providing the technical assistance needed. Thanks are also due to the two anonymous referees, for their comments that very much improved the quality of the paper, and to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics (PCBS), for conducting the fieldwork. The analyses and ideas presented in the paper are the responsibility of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the position of the WHO or the PCBS. The paper was presented at the 6th international Health Economics Association congress in Copenhagen, Denmark, and at the 14th Economic Research Forum Conference in Cairo, Egypt.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Community and Public Health, Birzeit University, Box 154, Ramallah, West Bank, Occupied Palestinian Territory

    Awad Mataria & Rita Giacaman

  2. Department of Economics, Faculty of Commerce and Economics, Birzeit University, West Bank, Occupied Palestinian Territory

    Awad Mataria

  3. Department of Medicine and Public Health, University of Bologna, Bologna, Italy

    Angelo Stefanini

  4. Department of Measurement and Health Information Systems, World Health Organization, Geneva, Switzerland

    Nirmala Naidoo, Paul Kowal & Somnath Chatterji

Authors
  1. Awad Mataria
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  2. Rita Giacaman
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  3. Angelo Stefanini
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  4. Nirmala Naidoo
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  5. Paul Kowal
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  6. Somnath Chatterji
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Correspondence to Awad Mataria.

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Mataria, A., Giacaman, R., Stefanini, A. et al. The quality of life of Palestinians living in chronic conflict: assessment and determinants. Eur J Health Econ 10, 93–101 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10198-008-0106-5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10198-008-0106-5

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