Quality of life is important especially in incurable illness. In dementia, we often need proxy reports of quality of life, but we know little about how individuals make their judgements. In care homes, proxies may be staff providing care or relatives, but staff rate quality of life differently to family. To our knowledge, no one has explored this qualitatively, so we used qualitative interviews to explore why staff and family think differently about quality of life.. To read the full article, log in using your NHS Athens details. To access full-text: click “Log in/Register” (top right hand side). Click ‘Institutional Login’ then select 'OpenAthens Federation', then ‘NHS England’. Enter your Athens details to view the article.