Quality of life, well-being and wellness: Measuring subjective health for foods and other products

Abstract

This paper introduces the conceptualization and measurement of quality of life, well-being, and wellness. Wellness, quality of life and well-being refer to the positive, subjective state that is opposite to illness. Thus, wellness is not the just absence of disease and the absence of illness; it is a separate positive state. Quality of life, well-being, and wellness are often discussed and described in terms of a multidimensional model. The strongest dimensions are physical, social, emotional/psychological, intellectual, and spiritual. The measurement of these positive dimensions of health have produced literally thousands of different measures, but most of them have been developed in a clinical setting and have been applied to specific disease conditions. Many of the existing clinical measures of wellness, well-being, and quality of life are very long, often over 100 items, and not suited to consumer research. Measures of quality of life and of well-being have focused on overall functioning. Quality of life of measures have been developed by the World Health Organization (WHO) and translated in many languages. Subjective well being has been defined as the combination of positive-negative affect balance and satisfaction with life, and is measured with two standard measures of these attributes. Wellness has largely been measured in the fields of clinical and counseling psychology; one new product oriented measure is the WellSense™ Profile (King et al., 2015). Wellness, well-being, and quality of life can be important additions to the measures studied in consumer perception of food and other consumer products.