Theorizing indicators

Policymakers and social theorists have increasingly come to rely on social indicators to guide their decisions and theories. Social indicators are also useful in bridging theory and empirical research as well as the traditional gap between policymaking and social theory. The concept of social indicators covers interpretation of cultural signs, simple statistical measures, and complex statistical indexes related to sets of domains. The article views the development of child well-being indicators as central not only in the social welfare field, but as an indicator of future societal conditions, given that children’s lives are especially sensitive to social change. The paper addresses the development of indicators of children’s well-being, arguing that the expansion of the field, the complexity of new domains and indicators, and the position of children as “being” and “becoming”, they are citizens of the present as well as being socialized for the future, illustrates that the next crucial step for the field is to further elaborate theories and models.     

Some social indicators for multiple family housing

This research suggests some social indicator candidates for families housed in multiple-family environments. Objective, subjective, and behavioral data sets are all represented in the analysis. This range of social statistics and the utilization of appropriate statistical analysis are viewed as necessary conditions for generating social indicators rather than simply relying on arbitrarily selected social statistics and assume they are indicators. Analysis of 1253 interviews in 88 Alberta subsidized housing projects reveals that subjective data from the tenant category of housing variables rank highest in accounting for present levels of user satisfaction and are viewed therefore as reasonable social indicators with respect to that issue.     

Big Data and Social Indicators: Actual Trends and New Perspectives

Big Data are a top subject in international research articles and a vast debate is taking place on their actual capability of being used to complement or even substitute official statistics surveys and social indicators in particular. In this paper we analyse the metadata of the Scopus database of academic articles on Big Data and we show that most of the existing and intensively growing literature is focused on software and computational issues whilst articles that are specifically focused on statistical issues and on the procedures to build social indicators from Big Data are a much smaller share of this vast production. Nevertheless the works that focus on these topics show promising results because in developed countries Big Data seem to be a good information base to create reliable proxies of social indicators, whereas in developing countries their use (for instance using satellite images) may be a viable alternative to traditional surveys. However, Big Data based social indicators deeply suffer of a number of open issues that affect their actual use: they do not correspond to any sampling scheme and they are often representative of particular segments of the population; they generally are private process-produced data whose access by national statistical offices is rarely possible although the intrinsic value of the information contained in Big Data has a social importance that should be shared with the whole community; Big Data lack the socio-economic background on which social indicators have been founded and their help to policy makers in their decision process is a fully open point. Therefore Big Data may be a big opportunity for the definition of traditional or new social indicators but their statistical reliability should be further investigated and their availability and use should be internationally coordinated.     

The time budget in socio-demographic statistics

The paper describes a Polish time budget survey conducted in 1976 on a rotation sample of the whole (non-agricultural and agricultural) adult population. Different time budget indicators are presented and their linkages with other statistical data and usefulness for social policy formulation and evaluation are discussed. Some new time indicators, not used in previous surveys, are recommended. Usefulness of time budged surveys for assessing an account of labor force and investigating of the social distribution of labor time as well as leisure time is underlined. The possibility of using time budget data for analyses of the social distribution of some welfare outlays in the field of cultural participation and consumption is also indicated. The paper is concerned with some methodological problems and the applicability of time budget research, rather than a comprehensive presentation of survey results.     

Level of development of a country: A possible new approach

Human development is a multidimensional phenomenon. It depends on a number of non-monetary aspects of life (social indicators of development). Per capita gross domestic product (PCGDP) is a means to achieve these nonmonetary aspects of life. To what extent PCGDP of a country is transformed into social development is an important phenomenon. Income elasticities of social indicators with respect to PCGDP reflect such relationship. This study attempts to find income elasticities of eight social indicators of development with respect to per capita real gross domestic product (PCRGDP) adjusted for purchasing power parity and expressed in international dollars for four points of time: 1960, 1970, 1980 and 1990. The income elasticities of social indicators may be identified as necessity, luxury and inferior. On the basis of the nature of the income elasticities of the social indicators of development the level of development of a country may be identified. This paper attempts to identify the level of development of a country on the basis of the nature of the income elasticities of the social indicators of development.     

The U.S. federal effort in developing social indicators

As an introduction to this issue, some historical background of the effort of the U.S. Federal goverment in tracking social trends and making use of social indicators is reviewed. The 1934 study, Recent Social Trends in the United States, and the monographs analyzing demographic trends sponsored by the U.S. Bureau of the Census, are seen as antecedents to the current support accorded what has become a kind of triennial Social Indicators publications. The three subject-matter social indicators volumes of the Federal government — Science Indicators, The Condition of Education and Health: U.S.A. — are reviewed in this volume, and the programs of several other agencies, the Bureau. etc., to develop and communicate social indicators are discussed. The forecast for the future of social indicators includes the development of social accounts, the improvement of models that have criterion social indicators as the dependent variable, and the appreciation of the statistical system to provide the information needed for improved monitorship and understanding. These are seen as joint endeavors of the public and private sectors.     

Static Numbers to Dynamic Statistics: Designing a Policy-Friendly Social Policy Indicator Framework

In line with the economic crisis and rapid socio-demographic changes, the interest in ??social?? and ??well-being?? indicators has been revived. Social indicator movements of the 1960s resulted in the establishment of social indicator statistical frameworks; that legacy has remained intact in many national governments and international organisations. With this background, this research examines whether existing social indicator frameworks are valid and effective enough to address increasingly complex social issues. The authors argue that, despite some improvements, current social indicators fail to provide an effective framework and tool for measuring the progress of social welfare and also for developing or reforming social policy to cope with newly emerging social problems. While proposing a new social indicator framework based on the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development??s pressure-state-response (PSR) model, the paper argues that the new framework should be more than displaying static numbers but should use dynamic statistics revealing causes and effects and shedding light on social and policy changes.     

Electronic Health Record Breaches as Social Indicators

Social Indicators Research - This study presents compelling social indicators of such magnitude that they cannot be ignored. The statistical evidence shows that data breaches of electronic health...     

Measures of Social Isolation

Social isolation is a deprivation of social connectedness. It is a crucial aspect that continues to be named by people as a core impediment for achieving well-being and as a relevant factor for understanding poverty. However it is not routinely included in surveys that provide data on multidimensional poverty measurement. Although the challenge of measuring social connectedness is daunting, this paper argues that existing research in several fields provides solid ground for the construction of basic internationally comparable indicators that measure specific aspects of social isolation. In particular, this paper synthesises the relevant literature on the measurement of social isolation and related phenomena, and on the basis of this synthetic review, proposes a module of indicators to measure social connectedness that could be feasibly incorporated into an internationally comparable multi-topic household survey.     

Oecd Social Indicators for 2001: a Critical Appraisal

The OECD social indicators for 2001 were critically reviewed by analysing their interrelationships across all OECD countries during the late 1990s. First, findings were provided covering the underlying structure of subsets of indicators by similarity in content as suggested by the OECD. Second, an analysis of the selected key indicators yielded five social dimensions, which were interpretedas conceptual constructs underlying the set of OECDsocial indicators at the level of the entire OECD area. Third, the relationships of each indicator withthese social dimensions were observed to aid choosing of appropriate indicators for making and evaluating social policies. Fourth, the OECDcountries were ranked according to their overall social welfare, as defined by the OECD social indicators, basedon the scores of the countries on the social dimensions. Fifth, similarities among the OECD countries were examined and it was found that the countries formed six bipolar country dimensions. The findings showed that an easily interpretable structure underlies the OECD social indicators. The paper clarified the use of the OECD social indicators for 2001 as a tool for planning and decision-making and for cross-national analyses of social policies.     

Measuring rural development in Nigeria: The place of social indicators

The use of economic growth indicators for the purpose of measuring rural development has for a long time been in practice in Nigeria and in many other developing nations. The inadequacy of this measure in depicting development in the area of societal well-being has suggested that social indicators could be a more meaningful tool to monitor and evaluate the level and conditions of rural development. This paper highlights the information needs for, and problems of incorporating social indicators in the measurement of rural development in Nigeria. It is recognized that for social indicators to be a useful tool in a place such as rural Nigeria, they must reflect the sociocultural peculiarities and the life style of the country's rural population. The paper finally suggests an improvement of the quality of social statistics in rural Nigeria to enhance their functional values to planners and policy makers.     

Some new directions for social indicators in the U.S. Department of Agriculture

While there is considerable research activity within the U.S. Department of Agriculture regarding the construction of social indicators, the current data base is not adequate to construct a reasonably complete system of indicators for rural development of other rural policy concerns. It is argued that rural development indicators must be able to sense not only the outputs of social institutions and organizations expressed as programs or policies, but also the impacts of these outputs on human needs. This requires that measures of outcomes or the impact of institutions on individuals, such as those found in studies of subjective estimates of life quality, be incorporated into the rural data base. It is suggested, that some of the expertise and budget allocated to the collection of enumerative data be shifted to the collection of subjective estimates of life quality data tailored to the specific needs of rural development research and policy issues.     

Social Health Indicators and Economic Growth: Evidence from East Asia and Pacific,Middle East and North Africa,South Asia,and Sub-Saharan Africa

The objective of this study is to empirically investigate a two-way statistical relationship between the social health indicators and economic growth in the context of four major regions of the world i.e., East Asia and Pacific, Middle East and North Africa (MENA), South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa. To recognize the relationship between the two variables, a time series, co-integration and Granger causality tests have been employed. Aggregate secondary data pertaining to these four regions from 1975 to 2011 on economic growth and social health indicators i.e., infant mortality, child abuse, child poverty, unemployment, weekly wages, health insurance coverage, teenage suicide, teenage drug abuse, high school dropouts, poverty, out-of-pocket health costs, homicides, alcohol related traffic fatalities, food insecurity, income inequality, HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, basic health units and rural health centers has been used for analysis. This study evaluates four alternative but equally plausible hypotheses, each with different policy implications. These are: (1) social health indicators Granger cause economic growth, (2) economic growth Granger cause social health indicators (the conventional view), (3) There is a bi-directional causality between the two variables and (4) Both variables are causality independent (although highly correlated). The empirical results only moderately support the conventional view that economic growth has significant long run casual effect on social health indicators in East Asia and Pacific, MENA, South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa. The present study find evident of unidirectional causality running towards economic growth to social health indicators, although, there are some bidirectional causality also exists between the variables. The percentage of unidirectional causality between economic growth and social health indicators is larger than bidirectional or neutrality hypothesis.     

The level of civilisation a new field for the application of social indicators

Social indicators have been recognised for some time as a means of measuring various facets of social life which were difficult to quantify, such as level of living, environment conditions and the quality of life. It is proposed here that they should also be applied to the most important of them all, and namely to the quality of the society itself. Quality of society is the outcome of society's development, it may be seen as a level of civilisation, i.e. a position on a scale between vile barbarism and highest civilisation. This position may be given a numerical expression in terms of social indicators. A suggestion for constructing such a system of indicators is presented in this paper.     

Composite measures of social,economic and demographic regional differentiation in Australia

This paper describes the application of the two-stage principal component method to analyse Australian aggretate/regional/ data. Statistical indicators of social standing, economic structure and demographic features are analysed separately in order to obtain composite measures of various complex characteristics of the regions in each of these domains. The method does not assume statistical independency of principal components, so the relations between them are examined. The index of regional socio-economic status as well as its relations to other characteristics are of the main interest.     

Social indicators and social management

The social indicators movement, which has attained world-wide significance, is based on awareness of the increasing necessity for a conscious regulation of social processes, as well as on the successful utilization of the social sciences. Both of these processes depend on: the character of the social order in the different countries, conceptions of the nature and functions of science, and the nature and functions of social indicators. Irrespective of international differences, however, many common problems exist; this makes their discussion possible despite different philosophical and sociological paradigms. Two main problems are addressed: (1) the definition of the concept of “system of social indicators” and especially “unity of objective and subjective indicators”, and (2) the definition of the conditions for their most effective involvement in the purposeful regulation of the social processes.     

MEASURING QUALITY OF LIFE: ECONOMIC,SOCIAL, AND SUBJECTIVE INDICATORS

Thinkers have discussed the “good life” and the desirable society for millennia. In the last decades, scientists offered several alternative approaches to defining and measuring quality of life: social indicators such as health and levels of crime, subjective well-being measures (assessing people's evaluative reactions to their lives and societies), and economic indices. These alternative indicators assess three philosophical approaches to well-being that are based, respectively, on normative ideals, subjective experiences, and the ability to select goods and services that one desires. The strengths and weaknesses of the various approaches are reviewed. It is argued that social indicators and subjective well-being measures are necessary to evaluate a society, and add substantially to the regnant economic indicators that are now favored by policy makers. Each approach to measuring the quality of life contains information that is not contained in the other measures.     

CONSTRUCTING A HEALTH AND SOCIAL INDICATOR FRAMEWORK FOR INDIGENOUS COMMUNITY HEALTH RESEARCH

Health and social indicators that capture the distinct historical, social, and cultural contexts of Indigenous communities can play an important role in informing the planning and delivery of community interventions. There is currently considerable interest in cataloguing and vetting meaningful community-level health and social indicators that could be applied to research and health promotion activities in Indigenous communities in Australia, Canada, and New Zealand, inclusive of conventional indicators as well as measures developed specifically for use in or with Indigenous communities. To avoid haphazard selection of indicators, and to assure the comprehensiveness and relevance of any given set of indicators, a framework that can accommodate and conceptually classify indicators representing a full range of domains is required. We report here on the development of a conceptual framework, by which Indigenous community indicators, and more general community-level social indicators, can be sorted, catalogued, and systematically classified within four hierarchical levels. The indicator framework was developed across Canada, Australia and New Zealand in consultation with academic researchers and Indigenous community stakeholders, building from established health and social indicator systems. The Indigenous indicator framework permits Indigenous communities, public health researchers, and funding agencies to compare and select the most appropriate indicators for application in specific contexts from the multitude of existing indicators.