title: Quality of life in Brazil: normative values for the WHOQOL-bref in a southern general population sample.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  Normative data for WHOQOL-bref are scarce in the literature and unavailable in Latin American countries. The main objective of this study was to provide normative scores of WHOQOL-bref in a general population sample in Brazil and to describe differences in mean scores according to some socio-demographic characteristics.
  
  
  METHODS
  WHOQOL-bref was applied to a randomly selected sample of the general population of Porto Alegre. Participants were literate people aged 20 to 64 years. The questionnaires were self-administered in the presence of an interviewer in the respondent's home.
  
  
  RESULTS
  The response rate was 68%, and the final sample contained 751 respondents (38% men, 62% women). Low quality of life was observed in the following subgroups: female gender, lower economic class, lower educational level, and the subgroup reporting a chronic medical condition. The mean scores of the WHOQOL-bref and percentiles of scores are reported as normative data for the general population.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Our results can be useful to researchers using the WHOQOL-bref to compare their results with normative data from a randomly selected sample of general population. Additionally, the ability of WHOQOL-bref to discriminate different population subgroups makes it an important tool to identify vulnerable groups in epidemiological surveys.
authors.affiliation: Graduate Studies Program in Epidemiology/Health Technology Assessment Institute/Hospital de Clínicas de Porto Alegre, Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul, Rua Ramiro Barcelos, 2350/building 21/Fifth floor, Porto Alegre, RS 90035-903, Brazil. lncruz@hcpa.ufrgs.br
authors.forename: Luciane N
authors.initials: LN
authors.lastname: Cruz
authors.forename: Carisi A
authors.initials: CA
authors.lastname: Polanczyk
authors.forename: Suzi A
authors.initials: SA
authors.lastname: Camey
authors.forename: Juliana F
authors.initials: JF
authors.lastname: Hoffmann
authors.forename: Marcelo P
authors.initials: MP
authors.lastname: Fleck
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D001938:Brazil; D005260:Female; D006305:Health Status Indicators; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D011159:Population Surveillance; D011594:Psychometrics; D011788:Quality of Life; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires / Q000592:standards*; D055815:Young Adult