Local Meanings of Wellbeing and the Construction of Wellbeing Indicators

There have been attempts to develop and employ tools for measuring development that shifted away from economic growth. In Thailand, a number of alternative indicators to measure the progress of development were created and employed. However, the indicators and measurements of development continued to be challenging, partly because of the dynamic changes of socio-economics, and partly due to the inconsistency between aggregated and local, or individual units of measurement. This paper aims to study meanings and develop wellbeing indicators of a community in the Northeast of Thailand. The data was derived from qualitative research conducted during 2013–2014. Focus group discussions with thirty-five formal and informal community leaders were used, and in-depth interviews were applied to collect data from thirty key informants. The results showed that the indicators of community wellbeing are classified into four groups, namely objective community wellbeing, community trust, community security, and community strength. The objective community wellbeing indicators were consistent with those that are used to guide policy and practice in Thailand. However, based on the local meaning of community wellbeing, new dimensions of indicators were found and proposed. This study recommended that these indicators should be developed further, to be employed as a tool to monitor progress, especially by local government.     

What Defines Quality of Life? The Gap Between Public Policies and Locally Defined Indicators Among Residents of Kodagu, Karnataka (India)

Improving quality of life (QoL) is one of the main goals of many public policies. A useful tool to measure QoL needs to get a good balance between indicators guided by theories (top-down approach) and indicators defined by local people (bottom-up approach). However, QoL measurement tools often neglect to include elements that define the standard of living at local level. In this paper, we analyse the correspondence between human development index, as an indicator adopted by governments to assess QoL, and the elements defined by local people as important in their QoL, called here local means. Using a free-listing technique, we collected information from 114 individuals from Kodagu, Kartanataka (India), to capture local means defining QoL. We then compared local means with the indicators used by Human development report (HDR) of Karnataka, the main measurement tool of QoL in Kodagu. The list of local means included access to basic facilities and many issues related to agriculture and natural resources management as elements locally defining QoL. We also found that HDR does not capture the means defined by people as indicators of QoL. Our findings suggest an important gap between current QoL’s indicators considered by public policies and the means of QoL defined by people. Our study provides insights for a set of plausible local indicators useful to achieve a balance between top-down and bottom-up approaches for the local public policies.     

Toward a comprehensive ‘quality-of-life’ index

Any attempt to construct an overall measure of the quality-of-life (“QOL”) of a community, population group, or larger society must inevitably confront the critical obstacle posed by the absence of a common numéraire. The diverse elements that significantly affect the “QOL” of individuals and social groups are each subject, at least in principle, to some form of measurement, but no satisfactory method has yet been devised whereby these different measurements could be reduced to a single metric.The construct that is developed in this paper cannot claim to have overcome this fundamental problem; nor does it settle the equally basic difficulties relating to what specific indicators to include in the composite construct, and how to weigh their individual values. However, it illustrates one possible approach toward the development of a summary index value that provides some insight into both direction (“favorable” or “unfavorable”) and magnitude of observed year-to-year changes in a selected number of fairly representative socioeconomic indicators for which measures were available for the United States annually from 1969 to the present. The information provided by this index lacks explanatory power, but examination of the components of the observed changes in the index does yield some useful insight into the relative contribution of changes in different “areas of concern” to the overall changes observed in the “QOL” in the United States during the 1969–1985 period.     

A DEA Approach to Measure the Quality-of-Life in the Municipalities of the Canary Islands

The notion of the quality of life has always intrigued economists, sociologists and other researchers in the area of social science. Since the genesis of the definition of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) as a truthful measure of well-being and economic development, other sophisticated methodologies have been proposed in the literature to measure the quality-of-life (QOL) that extend in a multidimensional way this complex concept. Measuring QOL in municipalities consists in finding a set of comparable attributes that can be weighted by some metric in order to construct a synthetic index. Thus, the narrow vision obtained by a single measure as the GDP, in which differences in the QOL cannot be fully analyzed, is overcome. Based upon a refinement of data envelopment analysis (DEA)—the cross-efficiency method, the current paper develops a synthetic QOL index that is based in 19 partial indicators which present the tradeoffs of different dimension for the 87 municipalities of the Canary Islands in Spain. Marginal rates of substitution are calculated to evaluate the tradeoffs on QOL dimensions. A method is also proposed to determine the scores chart of each municipality which can be used as a tool to policy makers in order to establish a program of improving the ranking position of the municipality identifying the critical QOL factors.     

Indigenous Wellbeing Frameworks in Australia and the Quest for Quantification

There is an emerging global recognition of the inadequacies of conventional socio-economic and demographic data in being able to reflect the relative wellbeing of Indigenous peoples. This paper emerges out of a recent desktop study commissioned by an Australian Indigenous organization who identified a need to enhance local literacies in data collection and interpretation in order to monitor the wellbeing of the Indigenous people within their region, manage governments in respect of their civic responsibilities to this population, and proactively and imaginatively plan for the future of the Indigenous people in their region. In canvassing available data and the growing Indigenous wellbeing literature, it became apparent that conventional statistical collections used to report on the status of populations are governed by a series of assumptions regarding three related concepts: wellbeing; demography; and economic productivity and prosperity. These assumptions have direct implications for how Indigenous peoples are represented to governments and broader society. The paper draws together the existing threads of literature regarding Indigenous wellbeing research to posit a possible broader framework for organising various kinds of Indigenous wellbeing analyses. In doing so, it identifies important shortcomings and deficits in the kinds of data that are available to Indigenous peoples in presenting themselves and their aspirations to governments with. It also opens up a critical analysis of the opportunities and obstacles for Indigenous communities in undertaking such research.     

Multidimensional Wellbeing: An Index of Quality of Life in a Developing Economy

Human wellbeing indices can shed light on a society’s quality of life. This study ranks human wellbeing by employing objective and subjective indicators of quality of life for hundred districts of Pakistan. Households level data used for the analysis includes ‘The Pakistan Social and Living Standards Measurement Survey’ for the year 2006–2007. The human wellbeing is examined in four domains: education, health, living conditions and economic situation. Principal component analysis is employed for indexing human wellbeing, rated in five quintiles are generated. The paper demonstrates the importance of education, health and living condition domains in determining the human wellbeing. Objective indicators of education i.e., adult literacy rate, net primary enrolment and gender equality in education are important variables in ranking of districts. Economic status of the households and communities are important variables in subjective perception of wellbeing. The results indicate substantial variation in human wellbeing among districts of Pakistan It may be considered that disparity in objective condition and in subjective perceptions are adequately depicting wellbeing differences. Finally, it is argued that objective indicators and subjective wellbeing measures are needed in unison to understand human quality of life and to make informed policy decisions.     

Bridging the Gap: Conceptual and Empirical Dimensions of Child Wellbeing in Rural Mexico

While conceptualizations of child wellbeing usually include multiple dimensions and complex notions, measurements of child wellbeing often tend to be simpler. This mismatch between concepts and measurements is often rooted in a limitation in the instruments that were originally conceived to assess child wellbeing. This paper aims to help in closing this gap by proposing a model that measures child wellbeing in a multi-dimensional way. With the aid of structural equation modeling (SEM), the model examines the physical health, cognitive ability, motor co-ordination, and emotional competence of around 2,000 children aged four to 6 years in poor rural communities in Mexico. Data is extracted from the Household Evaluation Survey-2003 (Encuesta de Evaluación de Hogares, ENCEL-2003). This paper concludes that further investments in the measurement of child wellbeing are needed, particularly in relation to subjective wellbeing, time use, and the role of children within the household and in society. Nevertheless, while more data is collected, this paper also concludes that SEM appears to be a great aid in exploring multiple dimensions of child wellbeing simultaneously.     

Capabilities,Subjective Wellbeing and Public Policy: A Response to Austin (2016)

It has recently been claimed that Sen’s capabilities approach can be used to advise the formation of public policy related to human wellbeing. It has also been proposed that measures of subjective wellbeing are inadequate for this purpose. These ideas are examined in relation to capabilities, using the same reference material as the proposing author. The theory of subjective wellbeing homeostasis is used as the alternative framework by which to understand the potential of subjective wellbeing for policy advice. This examination reveals an almost complete lack of evidence that capability measurement could fulfill the suggested role. While subjective wellbeing has more potential for this purpose, caveats to its employment for policy advice are also evident.     

Aversion to Local Wellbeing Inequality is Moderated by Social Engagement and Sense of Community

Our subjective wellbeing is a mix of our personal and community wellbeing. One indication of their close relationship is the strong negative correlation between our own subjective wellbeing and the degree of subjective wellbeing inequality within our community. This negative relationship reflects our innate and socialized inequality aversion and holds regardless of whether the group is large as in the case of countries or small in the case of local neighbourhoods. While the country case has been well documented in the subjective wellbeing literature, the relationship between the local community distribution of subjective wellbeing and individual subjective wellbeing has received little attention. In this paper we demonstrate the sensitivity of individual life satisfaction to the distribution of life satisfaction within electoral wards in urban New Zealand and explore several possible behavioural drivers. We find that having social support and feeling a sense of community both reduce the negative effects of local subjective wellbeing inequality, while being less socially engaged exaggerates them. Our results highlight the potential that programmes aimed at reducing wellbeing inequalities within local communities might play in raising individual as well as average wellbeing.

     

The Development of A County Level Index Of Well-Being

In an effort to assess the level of community need and inform responsive resource allocation, Larimer County, Colorado developed a county-level index of well-being. This paper describes the development of that index including the selection of indicators and the methodology for scoring and presenting those indicators. We also present how the local community used the information and describe problems we found while aggregating indicators. Next, we show the results of evaluating our index using Hagerty et al.’s (2001, Social Indicators Research 55, pp. 1–96) 14 criteria for determining validity and usefulness of quality of life indices. The Larimer County index performed above both the “satisfactory” rating and the mean of the 22 indices evaluated using Hagerty et al.’s. We conclude that the Larimer County index is based on a solid approach that will be helpful to local policy makers.     

Ideology and social indicators of the quality of life

This paper explores the possibility that social-psychological, evaluative measures of social well-being/quality of life (QOL) perceptions may embody unintended ideological elements. We argue that individual QOL satisfactions are likely caused, in part, by ‘satisfactions’, or conservative orientations, vis-à-vis societal institutions. Four dependent measures of QOL attitudes-overall life satisfaction, service satisfaction, community satisfaction, and powerlessness-are derived from factor analyses and established measurement procedures. Each of these QOL indicators is found to exhibit significant bivariate associations with measures of political-economic ideology. These relationships are somewhat reduced, but persist at statistically significant levels, when socio-demographic background variables are held constant. We then discuss the implications of our results for theory and method in the social indicators field.     

Measuring and Analysing the Wellbeing of Australia’s Indigenous Population

According to most standard socioeconomic indicators (for example employment, income and education), Indigenous Australians tend to have worse outcomes than their non-Indigenous counterparts. Most objective health indicators including life expectancy also tend to be worse. Traditionally, these two domains and associated objective indicators have been the focus of research, government policy and evaluation. There has been less research, however, on differences between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians in subjective measures of wellbeing. In this paper, I attempt to answer three related research questions on Indigenous wellbeing—What is the average level of emotional wellbeing and satisfaction with life for the Indigenous and non-Indigenous population of Australia? How do the differences between the two populations change once other characteristics have been controlled for? What are the factors associated with emotional wellbeing within the Indigenous population? With regards to the first two questions, Indigenous Australians are less likely to report frequent periods of happiness and more likely to report periods of extreme sadness than the non-Indigenous population. Surprisingly, given these results for emotional wellbeing, a major finding from the analysis was that Indigenous Australians were significantly more likely to report above-average satisfaction with their life. The main finding with regards to the third question is that using retrospective measures, those in remote areas report higher levels of happiness than those in non-remote areas. This is different to the results for socioeconomic status and objective measures of health found elsewhere and has important implications for government policy in Australia.     

Identifying Off-Diagonal Communities Using the Australian Early Development Census Results

An individual’s, and indeed the nation’s, social and economic futures are highly dependent on early childhood development (ECD) outcomes, with poor ECD inhibiting future opportunities. Ecological ECD literature describes family, community and institutions as being key factors in children’s wellbeing, with suggestions that community factors may ameliorate impacts of poor ECD. It is therefore important to develop a greater understanding of those modifiable factors that positively, and negatively, affect ECD outcomes so as ECD policy and practice can be designed and implemented effectively. One approach to this analysis is through the identification and analysis of influencing factors identified within off-diagonal communities—that is those communities where children have either developed well in consideration of their high-levels of socio-economic disadvantage, or developed poorly in consideration of their low levels of socio-economic disadvantage. In this paper we describe a new method for the identification of off-diagonal communities. The method provides a clear and transparent approach to community selection, including a range of methods to further interrogate the community selection ensuring a rigorous and considered selection process. This new method, based on population Census and Australian Early Development Census data, provides the first step in identifying community factors likely to facilitate childhood wellbeing. These findings could inform policy making to reduce inequities by assisting in policy and service delivery design targeted to community needs.     

Using Both Objective and Subjective Indicators to Investigate the Impacts of Coal Mining on Wellbeing of Host Communities: A Case-Study in Shanxi Province,China

This paper uses both objective and subjective indicators to investigate the impacts of coal mining on the wellbeing of host communities. It also looks at the relationship between these two measurements of wellbeing. Both objective and subjective indicators show that coal mining has no obvious impact on family income, but negative impacts on air quality. Subjective wellbeing indicators also reveal the negative impacts of coal mining on water safety, inflation rate, price of necessities and income disparity. The only positive impact associated with coal mining is the improvement of housing conditions, revealed by only objective indicators. Some objective indicators are good predictors of subjective wellbeing indicators (e.g. income and air quality) using both aggregated data and individual data, others not (e.g. housing and education). The inconsistency between objective and subjective indicators might be attributed to scope issues, scale discordance etc. This paper empirically confirms both sets of indicators are needed when measuring wellbeing, and illustrates approaches to examine the relationship between objective and subjective wellbeing indicators.     

The Influence of Environment and Personality on the Affective and Cognitive Component of Subjective Well-being

Subjective well-being (SWB) has two components: affective well-being (AWB) and cognitive well-being (CWB). The present study demonstrated that AWB and CWB have are influenced by different factors in a nationally representative sample in Germany (N = 1053). Neuroticism was a stronger predictor of AWB than CWB. Unemployment and regional differences between the East and West of Germany were stronger predictors of CWB than AWB. In addition, the study demonstrated that shared evaluative biases in personality and SWB ratings inflate estimates of the effect size of personality. After controlling for this bias, the effects of environmental factors (unemployment, regional differences) on CWB were stronger than the effects of personality (neuroticism). The results demonstrate that AWB and CWB are distinct components of SWB and that research findings for one component may not generalize to the other component. The results also raise important questions about the weighing of the two components in the creation of subjective social indicators.     

Developing a Model of Community Wellbeing and Resilience in Response to Change

This study examines the relationship between base of the pyramid (BoP) entrepreneurship success and wellbeing. The major contention is that the success of the BoP entrepreneurs is influenced by information and training support provided by large private organizations. A total of 134 BoP entrepreneurs, who run community information centres in remote areas of Bangladesh with the support of a leading private telecommunications company, participated in this research. The result revealed that support from a large private organization is important to ensure business success, and that this subsequently enhances the wellbeing of BoP entrepreneurs. Not only has this study empirically confirmed that assistance provided by large private organizations to BoP entrepreneurs influences business success, assistance also enhances the wellbeing of this vulnerable group and thus facilitate to reduce poverty within the local community. This study therefore can be a guideline for large private organizations that are willing to carry out pragmatic corporate social initiatives.     

Assessing the Effectiveness of Social Indices to Measure the Prevalence of Social Isolation in Neighbourhoods: A Qualitative Sense Check of an Index in a Northern English City

Tackling the many negative health effects of social isolation has been identified as a policy priority in the UK and consequently many local authorities are developing strategies to ascertain its prevalence through the development of social indices. This paper provides a novel assessment of the emerging approach of developing indices to identify social isolation. It provides an overview of a selection of indices being developed by local authorities across England; considers the validity of such quantitative indices; and explores the extent to which more in-depth qualitative data collected at a neighbourhood level is additionally required. It draws on evidence of a social isolation index for older people created by a northern English local authority, assessing its validity through a qualitative sense check; an innovative approach which has not been attempted elsewhere. The paper contributes important knowledge to the growing literature in this field by further developing understanding around the most effective ways of identifying, measuring, and understanding social isolation at a local level. Our findings indicate that an index, alone, is insufficient to fully capture the multifaceted nature of social isolation as relevant indicators, unique to local spaces, which cannot easily be measured quantitatively, are often excluded. The paper offers a significant and original contribution to the debate for both academics who wish to gain a greater understanding of the role indices can play in identifying those most at risk of social isolation, as well as for policy makers and practitioners who are currently grappling with this challenging concept.     

A Method of Assembling Cross-sectional Indicators into a Community Quality of Life

This study develops a new method of measuring quality of life at the local and state level. Further, it presents a methodology that combines heterogeneous indicators from different fields, such as economics, social, and health, into one total measurement. The technique shown can be used to compare one region with another, or compare one metro area with its own performance through time. The analysis shows which categories and indicators are ranked as the highest and serves as a measurement of economic development and potential targets for marketing plans. Every analyst interested in an aggregate, community measurement tool should be interested in the procedure and results.     

The Use of Common Area <Emphasis Type="Italic">k</Emphasis>-Sample Test in Evaluating Targeting Methodologies: An Application to the Case of Egypt

The quality of life (QOL) is a measure of social wellbeing and life satisfaction of individuals in an area. Measuring its spatial dynamics is of great significance as it can assist the policy makers and practitioners in improving the balance between urbanization and living environment. This study proposes an approach to spatially map and examine the relationships between QOL, land use/land cover (LULC) and population density in an urban environment. The city of Lahore, Pakistan was selected as the case study area. The QOL was evaluated through the data related to physical health, psychological, social relationships, environment (natural and built), economic condition and development, and access to facilities and services. The weights/relative importance of each QOL domain was determined through the analytic hierarchy process by processing the data collected from local field experts. Overall QOL was computed by applying the domain weights to the data; spatial mapping of QOL domains and overall QOL was conducted afterwards. The spatial dynamics of QOL were examined, and its interrelationships with LULC and population density were analyzed. The relationship between these three variables turned out to be spatially dynamic. The proposed approach assists the spatial mapping and analyses of QOL, LULC and population, and by examining the spatial dynamics of these variables, contributes to devising appropriate land management and QOL improvement strategies and policies in the metropolitan regions.