Hello,

What an interesting question.

I found this reference for 1913:

Tibblin, G., Tibblin, B., Peciva, S., Kullman, S., & Svärdsudd, K. (1913). The Göteborg quality of life instrument: an assessment of well-being and symptoms among men born, 33-38.

I was unable to access this paper, and would like to have seen whether the term was referenced to anyone else. However, I found a paper about in on ResearchGate, but have still not seen the full text (have requested it):

Tibblin, G., Tibblin, B., Peciva, S., Kullman, S., & Svärdsudd, K. (1990). " The Göteborg quality of life instrument"--an assessment of well-being and symptoms among men born 1913 and 1923. Methods and validity. Scandinavian journal of primary health care. Supplement, 1, 33-38.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/21056394

I am looking forward to reading other members' responses.

Very best wishes,

Mary

Tibblin, G., Tibblin, B., Peciva, S., Kullman, S., & Svärdsudd, K. (1990). " The Göteborg quality of life instrument"--an assessment of well-being and symptoms among men born 1913 and 1923. Methods and validity. Scandinavian journal of primary health care. Supplement, 1, 33-38.

The subjects are born 1913 and 1923, the paper is written 1990.

Here is a paper from 1896:

https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/intejethi.6.3.2375449

with the full text at https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/pdfplus/10.1086/intejethi.6.3.2375449

and the relevant quotation being "Its dominating idea is that of conscious 'selection' in social life, or of the expression of practical economics in terms of quality of life." (p. 293)

S. Béatrice Marianne Ewalds-Kvist - thank you for your clarification. :-)

I got this one wrong, but I think these date back (hopefully!)

These are early uses of the phrase:

I found this reference from 1934 mentioning quality of life:

Mitchell, W. (1934). The quality of life.

William Mitchell was discussed by a ResearchGate member:

Davies, M. (2003). The philosophy of Sir William Mitchell (1861-1962) A mind's own place.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/257027903

This is from 1917:

Bourne R. (1917) The Twilight of Idols. The Seven Arts, 11 (October, 1917), 688-702

Rudolph Simon Bourne

http://www.expo98.msu.edu/people/bourne.htm

"Is there something in these realistic attitudes that works actually against poetic vision, against concern for the quality of life as above machinery of life?"

A chapter in this book mentions quality of life, but I have not been able to access it:

Kelly HA. Dyspareunia. In: Kelly HA, ed. Gynecology. New York: D. Appleton and Company; 1928: 235-239.

The following article implies the quality of working life but does not mention the quality of life:

Thorndike, E. L. (1917). The curve of work and the curve of satisfyingness. Journal of Applied Psychology, 1(3), 265-6.

https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015058594022;view=1up;seq=282

Very best wishes,

Mary

Please tell me why you asked this question. To write an article/book or just for your personal knowledge? If for your writing, you need to specify what you meant by a "scientific sense". The term "quality of life" has long been used in health sciences and no one can claim he or she is the first one on earth who coined this word. Many researchers have endeavored to quantify it using generic or disease-specific measures. The good starting point is SF36, which was developed around 30 - 40 years ago. In the case of personal knowledge, I think it is quite useless for this enquiry. There are so many queries you can pose, but it is no need to find the exact answers. For example, why use a significance level of 0.05 but not 0.01, 0.02, 0.03 or other numbers?