Objective  To examine the level and influencing factors of quality of life (QoL) among the elderly living in nursing homes of Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps and to provide evidences for improving QoL of the elderly and developing old-age care policies.

  Methods  We recruited 240 elderly people (≥ 60 years) at 6 old-age care institutions of Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps with stratified random cluster sampling and conducted a face-to-face survey among the elderly from July 2018 to July 2019. The Medical Outcomes Study 36-Item Short Form Health Survey (SF-36) was adopted for assessment of QoL.

  Results  For the 225 valid responders, the overall QoL score was 56.81 ± 30.89 and the scores of physical health (physical component summary, PCS) and mental health (mental component summary, MCS) were 48.37 ± 25.93 and 66.50 ± 21.68; the responders′ QoL domain scores were 43.00 ± 33.59 for physical functioning (PF), 43.00 ± 48.39 for role-physical (RP), 54.87 ± 32.78 for bodily pain (BP), 52.87 ± 32.78 for generall health (GH), 61.63 ± 20.92 for social functioning (SF), 73.97 ± 19.03 for mental health (MH), 63.11 ± 45.94 for role-emotional (RE), and 67.27 ± 20.09 for vitality (VT), respectively. The results of stepwise multivariate linear regression analysis demonstrated that the elderly′ PCS and MCS score were positively correlated with average monthly income and the MCS score was positively associated with education level; whereas, elderly′ PCS and MCS score were inversely correlated with age and the number of chronic diseases suffered from.

  Conclusion  The quality of life is poor among the pension institution-dwelling elderly in Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps and the elderly′s physical and mental health are mainly influenced by age, education, monthly average income, residence region and the number of chronic diseases suffered.