Anyone who has attempted to review the literature on quality of
life will realise that there are many different approaches to this
issue, many definitions (some objective and some subjective), and
many ways of operationalizing and measuring the concept.18 The
lack of consensus regarding definition and measurement, in spite
of fifty years of research and literally thousands of scholarly
papers, and the fundamental role of values in determining the
quality of life, leads to the inevitable conclusion that the concept
has meaning only at a personal level.