Associations of Quality of Life with Service Satisfaction in Psychotic Patients: A Meta-Analysis.
BACKGROUND
Quality of life (QoL) has gained increasing attention as a desired outcome of psychosocial treatments targeting psychotic patients. Yet, the relationship between the patients' satisfaction with services and QoL has not been clearly established, perhaps due to the multidimensionality of the QoL concept and the variability in its assessment.


OBJECTIVE
This is the first systematic meta-analysis of all available evidence assessing the relationship between QoL and service satisfaction.


METHODS
In all, 19 studies reporting data of 21 independent samples (N = 5,337) were included in the present meta-analysis. In moderator analyses, effects of age, sex, diagnoses (schizophrenia vs. other psychoses), treatment context (inpatients vs. outpatients), study design (cross-sectional vs. longitudinal), and QoL domain (subjective vs. health-related) were examined.


RESULTS
Analyses revealed a highly significant medium-sized effect (r = .30, p < .001) for the associations of QoL and service satisfaction. Effect sizes were significantly stronger for subjective than health-related quality of life (r = .35 vs. r = .14, respectively). Moreover, associations with subjective QoL remained largely robust when accounting for moderating variables, although there was a trend of stronger associations for outpatients compared to inpatients. In contrast, effect sizes for health-related QoL were small and only observable for samples with longitudinal designs.


CONCLUSIONS
Associations between QoL and service satisfaction appear to be robust but are differentiated in regard to QoL domain. Our findings suggest that agents responsible for service design and implementation need to take the patients' perception of the service adequacy for achieving QoL enhancement into account.
Department of Psychology, Middlesex University Dubai, Dubai, United Arab Emirates.
Eleni
E
Petkari
Department of Psychology, Middlesex University Dubai, Dubai, United Arab Emirates; Department of Applied Psychology: Health, Development, Enhancement and Intervention, Faculty of Psychology, University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria.
Jakob
J
Pietschnig
D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D017060:Patient Satisfaction; D011618:Psychotic Disorders / Q000523:psychology* / Q000628:therapy*; D011788:Quality of Life