CASP-19 Quality of Life Scale

The CASP-19 is a 19-item self-report measure of quality of life designed specifically for people in early old age, grounded in a theory of human need rather than in health or functional status. Developed by Martin Hyde, Richard Wiggins, Paul Higgs, and David Blane in 2003, it conceptualizes later-life quality of life as the degree to which four basic needs are satisfied: Control, Autonomy, Self-realization, and Pleasure, giving the scale its acronym. Each item is rated on a four-point Likert scale describing how often a statement applies, and the items are summed into four domain subscales and an overall score. The instrument was built explicitly to separate quality of life as an outcome from its causes such as health, income, and social circumstances, so that those determinants could be studied as predictors. Because it taps satisfaction of needs rather than the presence of disease or disability, CASP-19 captures the positive, agentic dimensions of ageing well. It has become a standard quality of life outcome in major ageing cohort studies and a benchmark against which newer older-adult measures are compared.