Quality of Life of Rural Women With Locomotor Disability

Abstract

People with disabilities are one of the most disadvantaged minority among newlineall the populations worldwide. The people with disabilities constitute a percent of newline2.21% of the total population of the country. The quality of life is a measurement newlinetool developed by the World Health Organization to assess the quality of life of the newlineindividuals. Although this tool has been used in different studies on significant newlinegroups. The application of it has been limited in disability studies and in newlinecomparative readings. Hence the present study is aimed at understanding the quality newlineof life of a section of the disadvantaged group, being women with locomotor newlinedisability residing in the rural environment and the study focuses on to diverse newlineregions, one being developmentally superior to the other. The study aims to project newlinehow the development of a region influences the quality of life of the disabled newlinewomen. Literature review was conducted to explore the association of the quality newlineof life and socio-economic variables. Descriptive research design has been adopted newlinefor the study. Rural women with locomotor disability in the age group of 18 to 59 newlinewere studied. The sample size was 350, derived by using the Krecie and Morgans newlinesample size determination table. The sample size was proportionately divided newlineaccording to the locomotor disabled rural women populations of the two districts, newlinenamely Raichur and Bangalore. The former being a least developed and the latter newlinebeing the most developed district in the state of Karnataka. The findings reveal that newlinethe locomotor disabled rural women are lagging behind in almost all the spheres, be newlineit, education, social life, employment, family and marriage and additionally they newlinexv newlinebear the brunt of negative beliefs of the society. It was seen that the quality of life newlineof the study population was low to moderate. The magnitude of disability and the newlinelevel of dependence had a significant negative relationship with quality of life newlinewhereas education and employment had a significant positive rela