[FORMATION OF THE NOTION OF «QUALITY OF LIFE¼, CONCEPTUALISATION AND METHODOLOGICAL ASPECTS (LITERATURE REVIEW)].

Quality of life (QoL) is an important health outcome and represents the primary aim of all medical interventions. The term QoL has been is frequently used in medical and philosophical literature in recent decades and has become an important concept and goal of public health research. Traditionally, biomedical results rather than QoL were the basic endpoints in clinical and public health research. However, recent research is increasingly focusing on the study of QoL in patients and the making use of QoL assessment has increased considerably. The concept of QoL has led to extensive research and has been used by the professional medical community in the treatment of a broad array of diseases. Literature search methods included database searches Scopus, Web of Science, MedLine, the Cochrane Library. Historical trends in the concept of QoL are discussed in this article and issues related to the conceptual and methodological aspects of constructing QoL in the context of health care.

[The identification of persons with excess body weight by means of a mail survey]. / Vyiavlenie lits s izbytochnoi massoi tela metodom pochtovogo oprosa.

The data of postal questionnaire were compared to those obtained as a result of examination (anthropometry) of a random sample (n-806) of persons working at one of the Moscow industrial enterprises. It has been shown that the postal questionnaire makes it possible to assess the body weight with an accuracy of up to +/- 3 kg in 67 percent of men and in 69 percent of women. Meanwhile the height could be assessed with an accuracy of up to +/- 3 cm in 93 percent of men and in 80 percent of women. The relationship was established between the error made in the subjective assessment of the body weight and the genuine magnitude of the body weight. The possibilities of correcting the data obtained have been also demonstrated. The postal questionnaire permits the identification of excess body weight (Quetelet's index over 28) in 68 percent of men and in 78 percent of women and can be used for studying the prevalence of excess body weight among the population without employment of additional manpower for examinations.