The quality of life is a multidimensional phenomenon. It is used to describe an individual’s own experience of their life, health, and functionality. Functionality includes physical, psychological and social sectors which are affected by individual and environmental factors. Experienced health predicts the future functionality and views positive and negative changes in it.

The problem of this thesis was to portray an individual’s own perception and functionality as well as the effects of chronic low back pain on quality of life. The aim was to achieve an overall picture of how the informant experiences their life and functionality because of the pain. The purpose was to portray the informant’s own view and experience with the help of RAND-36- Measure of Health-Related Quality of Life and ICF-classification.

The results of RAND-36 were viewed through eight health concepts which are physical functioning, role limitations caused by physical health problems, role limitations caused by emotional problems, social functioning, emotional well-being, energy/fatigue, pain, and general health perceptions. ICF-core-sets Low Back Pain Brief -form was used to view the overall functionality. The functionality check was conducted twice, once in the spring of 2015 and the other in the autumn 2015 in order to get an overall understanding. With RAND-36 it was found that there were many quality of life degenerating factors due to pain and functionality restrictions. Experienced health indicated the presence of degenerative factors also in the future.