A system of social indicators for the CMEA countries and for Hungary

This paper discusses the reasons for the growing demand for social indicators in Hungary and in other European socialist countries. A brief history of the construction of a system of social indicators within the framework of the Council of Mutual Economic Aid is given. The subsystems and the main indicators are described. The present practice and the problems of social classifications used in the social indicator systems and in social surveys are treated. In addition to the existing data sources of social indicators, sample surveys were considered to be necessary to provide a full and detailed view of Hungarian society. In addition to objective indicators, recently, subjective indicators have also been collected.     

Measures of accessibility as social indicators: A note

Although accessibility to jobs, services and amenities is an important component of the quality of life, it is rarely articulated in operational definitions of the concept. This note stresses the importance of physical accessibility to social well-being in cities, and outlines and reviews several measures which could be used to reflect territorial variations in accessibility to specific ‘goods’. One measure-a modified version of the gravity model-is elaborated in detail, and its utility as a social indicator is illustrated using the example of accessibility to primary medical care in Edinburgh, Scotland.     

Regional disparities in Indonesia: A social indicators approach

The paper examines the nature of regional imbalance in Indonesia by using a number of social indicators. Several disaggregated social indices are constructed with the help of a taxonomic technique. For the purpose of comparison, an overall economic index is also constructed. It is observed that the ranking of provinces differ substantially across the indices, implying that there is no causal relationship between the selected social and economic indicators. Regional disparities declined in the past decade in terms of all social indices except the demographic index. Economic inequality nowever increased between 1970 and 1980.     

Current work on the social indicators system for the Federal Republic of Germany

The paper in hand deals with the construction of the SPES Indicators Tableau and its extensions and modifications which are carried out by current work. Advantages of time series regression analysis for social reporting as well as classifying social change are discussed. The paper ends with a short prospect on the publication in preparation which shall continue the social reporting of the SPES Indicators Tableau.     

Social indicators for social planning: The case of Israel

Social planning (SP) is viewed as an organizing framework for guiding government intervention in social life. Social indicators (SI) can provide the informational basis for formulating policies, preparing social plans and evaluating the impact of government activities. Both SP and SI are only two links in a desired sequence of organized social action. But given the present state of the art, the urgency of social problems and the opportunity cost of waiting for further theoretical development-initial efforts should be directed at developing SI for SP. Israel's experience is presented as an example of:

1. The ideological and operational background to specific types of intervention of the state. Within this framework the question arises whether vagueness on the subject of SP can be regarded as the cause of casual and negligent treatment of social problems by government.
2. Specific areas that have been neglected, or that have not been given adequate attention, because of the lack of SI to assist in acquiring an overall understanding of societal changes.

These examples are used as a basis for suggesting some practical possibilities of developing SI and SP in Israel and elsewhere.     

International social indicators: The OECD experience

One of the few efforts to develop an operational set of international social indicators is underway through the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. The paper describes the OECD plan and gives some preliminary appraisal of the completed first phase of the work, the definition of the elements of well-being for which specific indicators of change should be developed. Attention is directed to certain aspects of the overall strategy being pursued by OECD including its careful delimitation of scope to the one type of social indicators (herein termed well-being indicators) for which international agreement now appears possible although very difficult. A possible governmental strategy for development of more comprehensive social indicators in the longer term context is suggested.     

Focal local indicators for social program evaluation

An important role for social indicators is in the evaluation of the impact of specific social programs. This requires (in the absence of randomized experiments) extended time-series of social indicators. Such series will usually only be available for administrative records (both public and private). It is in the national interest that these be made flexibly research-retrievable by local region, by frequent time interval, and in fine topical breakdown. The ability to report aggregate statistics retrieved for lists of persons adds still greater precision in program evaluation, and can be done with no loss of privacy and without any release of individual data. For this purpose, the use of uniform individual identification numbers add efficiency without increased risk to privacy.     

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.     

On the use of social indicators for planning

A social indicator in the context of planning, which induces a course of social change, is not a mere ‘good statistic’. While its validity depends on the relation drawn among its constituent properties, its relevance would depend upon the sequential relations it can draw with the other variables concerned with the envisaged course of change. And its necessity and efficiency will be rated accordingly as it can epitomize the situation which all these variables depict. A properly constructed set of indicators, therefore, may not only suggest the planning measures which should be employed but also throw light on a better formulation of the targets, goals and even the objective of planning. These points are briefly discussed in this paper with illustrations from India.     

A test of the utility of social indicators for behavioral health service planning

Given current imperatives for more effective, responsive, and economical government, policy planners and administrators are seeking increasing assistance from social scientists. Here the usefulness of social indicators to the processes of policy planning and implementation in the delivery of mental health, alcohol and drug abuse services is investigated to determine whether social indicator data can contribute to more effective policy planning. In a two part study, the relationship between social indicators and Specific sources of these data were: population total, subdivided by geographic area and race (Caucasian, Black, and Other, which in Arizona is virtually all Native Americans) from the 1975 special census; population by age and ratio of dissolutions to marriages from the Arizona Statistical Review for 1977; crime rates from the Arizona State Justice Planning Agency for 1975; and cause of death rates from the Bureau of Vital Statistics, Arizona Department of Health Services for 1975. Subjective measures of psychological well-being were not available for the internal validational component of the study. state wide service utilization rates and The Negative Affect Scale measures the individual's level of anxiety, worry, loneliness, and sadness, and is associated with other measures that have been used in epidemiological studies to identify persons with psychological difficulties. The Psychiatric Screening Inventory assesses an individual's level of psychiatric impairment as evidenced by the frequency with which he or she reports having experienced each of the 22 psychological and psychosomatic symptoms on the scale. It has also been used in numerous epidemiological studies to investigated levels of impairment among various populations. The Positive Affect Scale reflects the degree to which the person is involved with, interested in, and experiences control over his or her physical and social environment. Active involvement with the world and frequent social participation are considered to be conducive to the experience of positive affect. The Perceived Quality of Life Scale measures the degree to which the persons is satisfied with the quality of his or her life. The score on this scale is a composite of the respondent's level of satisfaction in different areas of life such as standard of living, health, personal functioning, and family life. The greater the satisfaction in these separate areas, the higher will be the individual's overall evaluation of the quality of his or her life. psychological well-being in the community is examined. Both objective and subjective social indicators were studied. Both types of indicators were found to be useful and complementary in identifying service needs and states of well-being in the community.     

Time-use auditing: An approach to validating social indicators

Following McCal,, ‘quality of life’ is defined as objective social conditions necessary to the general happiness, where ‘happiness’ is understood in the broad sense, as including all forms of intrinsically valuable experience, not just ‘feeling happy’. The argument is then made that in order for this definition to be fully implemented happiness in the broad sense must also be assessed. The latter half of the paper is devoted to describing a set of procedures, collectively called ‘time-use auditing’, for determining the extent to which an individual person is happy, in the broad sense, in a stated interval of time. Intrinsically valuable experience is analyzed into two dimensions: duration and level. The first is determined by time-budgeting and the second (in a general way) by Maslow's hierarchy of needs. Specifically, Maslow's hierarchy is spelled out in concrete terms by means of “time-use rating structures’, each one specific to a particular time-use category; the authors have written rating structures for adolescents of either sex, ages 12 to 17 inclusive. By way of illustration, an audit of three weeks in the life of a 16-year-old girl is presented. The paper concludes with a discussion of what remains to be done, with special stress on writing time-use rating structures for other age groups and modifying structures already in existence to reflect the values of particular social groups.     

The sociology of consumption: Deriving new social indicators

A new area of research is emerging from an integration of sociology and consumer research. It is called the ‘sociology of consumption’. To date, its applications have been most thoroughly spelled out for marketers and consumer researchers. This paper explores the relevance of the sociology of consumption for social indicators research. It begins by defining this new area of research, then it discusses how a society's consumption may be conceptualized and measured. It concludes with several examples of how the study of consumption can not only be used to characterize societies but to reveal their social processes as well.     

German Reunification: Welfare Gains and Losses East and West

A framework of welfare accounts (Juster and Stafford, 1985; Headey, 1993; see also Goodin et al., 1999) is used to assess gains and losses to East and West Germans in the post-reunification period, 1990–1997. The welfare accounts have three segments: a capital/stocks account, an income/flows account and a subjective welfare/psychic income account. This framework differs from conventional welfare economic accounts in explicitly defining and measuring welfare in psychological terms ... as perceived utility/satisfaction. It has recently been argued that this approach is required, if one accepts that individual utilities are not exogenous but are affected by changing comparisons with others (Duesenberry, 1949; Easterlin, 1974, 1995; Hollaender, 2001). Our hypotheses are that in the post-reunification period West German welfare was sacrificed – in all three segments of the accounts – in order to permit resources to flow to East Germans and to boost their stocks, flows and utilities. The hypotheses are supported in the case of West Germans, but results are mixed for East Germans. Our data source is the German Socio-Economic Panel (GSOEP) which began in 1984 in West Germany and has involved reinterviewing a very large representative national sample every year since. The panel was extended to East Germany in June 1990, before formal reunification occurred, and so provides a picture of stocks, flows and utilities before the effects of integration into the Federal Republic were felt.     

Political and bureaucratic dilemmas in social indicators for policy making

This paper identifies a variety of political and bureaucratic constraints on the use of social indicators in policy making, including those associated with nonuse, misuse, quantification, and value-weighting. The basic elements in the policy making process are identified as value-conflict, bureaucratic maintenance, and analytic rationality. These elements and the activites of policy making are then related to social indicator research. Means for overcoming the constraints are discussed including: the use of sensitivity analysis, improved communication, a commitment to intellectural pluralism and moral responsibility, and especially improved policy modeling.     

Measuring social indicators in opinion surveys: A method to improve accuracy on sensitive questions

Asking sensitive questions, without risking a terminated interview or response bias, is a major problem in deriving accurate social indicators based on public opinion surveys. This problem has become particularly acute as the topics that interest researchers have become more personal in nature. Mail and telephone surveys, and methods such as the randomized response technique, have all been used to try and overcome this problem, with varying degrees of success. In this paper, we describe an alternative approach using a sealed booklet. We report results from a question-format experiment that asked respondents the same sensitive questions in a sealed booklet, completed in the presence of the interviewer, and in a standard face-to-face interview. The survey used for the experiment was a personal interview survey of drug use based on a national population sample. The sealed booklet format was found to produce more accurate estimates of drug use compared to direct questions. In addition to assuring the respondent greater anonymity, the sealed booklet permits a wide range of questions to be asked and does not limit the analyses that can be conducted on the data.     

The potential of social indicators: Minimum conditions for impact at the national level as suggested by a study of the use of ‘social indicators’ 73

Empirical evidence is presented which suggests that the use of social indicators among upper level government officials in the United States is minimal at present. Further, the level of use is not likely to be increased by improved measurement procedures, aesthetically improved packaging, or more widespread dissemination of such information among persons who influence policy decisions. The power of such information can be expected to be no greater than that of ‘mere’ statistics unless deliberate effort is made to institutionalize the importance of social indicators into government operations in conjunction with policy planning, goal setting, and commitment to the use of indicators as a system of national evaluation of progress toward the achievement of societal objectives. Several recommendations are made to develop the potential of social indicators and to increase their creative and useful application in matters of public policy at the national level.     

Measurement of poverty and equity: Some Asean social indicators experience

In ASEAN countries, improvements in measurements of poverty and equity can take several forms. First, some poverty lines should be officially adopted, e.g., a poverty threshold of $300 and a subsistence threshold of $150 (per capita per year, ‘Kravis’ dollars, mid-1970s). Second, target distributive groups should be identified and new indicators, such as a proposed index of ethnic imbalance in Malaysia, could be designed where needed. Third, quick-response well-being surveys, as in the social weather station experiment in the Philippines, could help in both the technical and the social understanding of the state of equity.     

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.