Comparison of health-related quality of life between deployed and nondeployed military personnel in three provinces of Southern Thailand in 2007

Abstract

The Cross sectional analytical study was performed to examine the HRQoL of military personnel who were deployed to the violence crisis in the south of Thailand compared with those not deployed in the year of 2007. The samples were drawn by systematic random sampling from two populations, deployed and nondeployed military personnel of the Third Infantry Division. HRQOL BREF THAI and Visual Analog Scale (VAS) were used to be the measurement. A total of 200 of 280 respondents (71.43 percent of response rate) comprised of 103 deployed and 97 nondeployed personnel. By WHOQOL BREF measurement; Nondeployed personnel reported individual’s overall perception of their quality of life higher than deployed participants (92.93 vs. 89.66, p value 0.046, 95%CI -6.089 to - .0579) But mean of VAS in deployed personnel were significantly higher than nondeployed group (77.76 vs. 70.05, p value < .001 ). All domains mean score in WHOQOL BREF of nondeployed participants were higher than deployed group but significantly different only in social and environmental domains. Age group, education, income, marital status, numbers of dependants, religion, rank, CORPS, underlying disease, tobacco smoking and alcohol drinking were not associated with WHOQOL score. Preparedness to mission measurement was performed only in deployed personnel. When assessed the association with level of preparation, WHOQOL score was significant higher in the good preparedness group than moderately preparedness group (93.14 vs. 88.73, p value .001, 95%CI -11.508 to -3.318)