Abstract
Paper deals with the concept quality of life (QOL) among children and adolescents and the methodological issues connected with the research of QOL. Our survey was completed by 581 respondents from the general population who are between 8 to 15 years old.
Their task was to describe the term 'quality of life' and to describe poor, average and outstanding ways of living using the examples of their friends and acquaintances. This survey is a reaction to the lack of research interested in how children themselves see the quality of their lives and it is a part of a research project mapping the QOL among children and adolescents.
Results show that the major QOL categories are quite constant across age and gender. Most of the respondents want the same: good family, parental care, good or average school grades, good friends and a sufficient amount of money (in the family).
Major gender and age differences appear among less frequent categories e.g. good clothes, freedom, sport, alcohol consumption or smoking.