Objective To investigate the quality of life of rural residents in arid areas of China.

Methods From June to August 2018, WHO Quality of Life-BREF (WHOQOL-BREF) was used to conduct a questionnaire survey of 1 200 households in four counties of Gansu, Shanxi, and Shandong provinces. The Cronbach'α coefficient was calculated to reflect the reliability of the scale, and construct validity was used to evaluate the validity of the scale. Analysis of variance and multivariate linear regression analysis were used to perform univariate and multivariate analyses for the influencing factors for quality of life score.

Results WHOQOL-BREF had a Cronbach'α coefficient of 0.85, a KMO value of 0.898, and a significance probability of < 0.01 based on the sphericity test. The 1 200 rural residents had an overall quality of life score of 80.18±8.81, with the highest score in psychological domain (14.25±1.40), followed by physiological domain (13.96±1.54), social domain (13.34±1.56), and environmental domain (12.74±1.89). The overall quality of life score of residents varied with housing, domestic water consumption, types of water supply, sewage discharge, time to arrive at the clinic, presence or absence of chronic diseases, and total sleep time (t ranged from -7.58 to 6.32, P < 0.05).

Conclusion WHOQOL-BREF is credible and reliable in evaluating the quality of life of rural residents in arid areas. Rural residents in arid areas tend to have good overall quality of life, and their quality of life can be further improved from the aspects of environment and personal lifestyle.