Quality of life of medical students in China: a study using the WHOQOL-BREF

The aim of this study was to assess the quality of life (QOL) of medical students during their medical education and explore the influencing factors of the QOL of students. A cross-sectional study was conducted in June 2011. The study population was composed of 1686 medical students in years 1 to 5 at China Medical University. The Chinese version of WHOQOL-BREF instrument was used to assess the QOL of medical students. The reliability and validity of the questionnaire were assessed by Cronbach's α coefficient and factor analysis respectively. The relationships between QOL and the factors including gender, academic year level, and specialty were examined using t-test or one-way ANOVA followed by Student-Newman-Keuls test. Statistic analysis was performed by SPSS 13.0. The overall Cronbach's α coefficient of the WHOQOL-BREF questionnaire was 0.731. The confirmatory factor analysis provided an acceptable fit to a four-factor model in the medical student sample. The scores of different academic years were significantly different in the psychological health and social relations domains (p