Comparative Perspectives on Social Indicators

Social Indicators Research -     

Neighborhood Social Disadvantage and Bicycling Behavior: A Big Data-Spatial Approach Based on Social Indicators

Social Indicators Research - Characterizing the travel behavior of disadvantaged neighborhoods is of significance for social inequality elimination and public well-being promotion. However, rather...     

Indicators of Social Isolation: A Comparison Based on Survey Data from Germany

The paper presents a data-based comparison of three indicators of social isolation that are frequently used in contemporary social research: (a) low frequency of social contact with friends, relatives, and neighbors (social contact indicator); (b) absence of a discussion network (discussion network indicator); (c) absence of social support (support indicator). All three indicators are in line with an understanding of social isolation as the absence of close personal relationships. However, as shown in this paper, they are correlated only weakly to each other and lead to different results concerning the overall share of social isolation, age disparities, and gender differences of social isolation. Against this background, the paper proceeds with considerations on the content validity and criterion validity of the three indicators. Different versions of each indicator are scrutinized to gain insights on content validity. Conclusions on criterion validity are drawn from an examination of the correlations between the indicators and health, poverty, satisfaction with family life, and satisfaction with social life. Findings suggest a higher validity of the social contact indicator compared to the other two indicators. Data source is the German Socio-Economic Panel. Discussions of content validity are additionally based on analyses using the German Family Survey and the German Aging Survey.     

Social Indicators and Voting: The Turkish Case

The aim of this article is to set out the various explanations of voting behaviour in Turkey. Its principal intellectual motivation is to present the political and social indicators that shape voting in such a way as to explain how an activity which is so crucial for democratic life is also based upon voters’ values and surrounding political context. Although the number of empirical work on voting behaviour in Turkey is increasing there is a considerable room for testing alternative variables and research tools in order to expand the academic knowledge on the problematic. Findings ratified that the political and personal values coupled with the other social factors have considerable impact on the voting behaviour in Turkey. Additionally this research also proved that these factors work differently for the competing political parties. Hence the contribution of this study is the introduction of an explicit analysis on the impact of different social and political factors that are salient in voting behaviour and magnitudes of these factors on different political parties by using a public database. Thus this study will not only uncover the relevancy of the variables in the literature for Turkish voters but also it will highlight the meaning and significance of these factors for different political parties.     

Mapping the Evolution of Social Research and Data Science on 30 Years of Social Indicators Research

Social Indicators Research - Social Indicators Research (SIR) year by year has consolidated its preeminent position in the debate concerning the study of all the aspects of quality of life. The...     

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.     

Spatial Disaggregation of Social Indicators: An Info-Metrics Approach

In this paper we propose a methodology to obtain social indicators at a detailed spatial scale by combining the information contained in census and sample surveys. Similarly to previous proposals, the method proposed here estimates a model at the sample level to later project it to the census scale. The main novelties of the technique presented are that (i) the small-scale mapping produced is perfectly consistent with the aggregates -regional or national- observed in the sample, and (ii) it does not require imposing strong distributional assumptions. The methodology suggested here follows the basics presented on Golan (2018) by adapting a cross-moment constrained Generalized Maximum Entropy (GME) estimator to the spatial disaggregation problem. This procedure is compared with the equivalent methodology of Tarozzi and Deaton (2009) by means of numerical experiments, providing a comparatively better performance. Additionally, the practical implementation of the methodology proposed is illustrated by estimating poverty rates for small areas for the region of Andalusia (Spain).

     

Indigenous Peoples and Indicators of Well-being: Australian Perspectives on United Nations Global Frameworks

One of the major tasks of the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues (UNPFII) following its establishment in 2000 has been to establish statistical profiles of the world’s Indigenous peoples. As part of this broad task, it has recommended that the Millennium Development Goals and other global reporting frameworks should be assessed with a view to incorporating greater recognition of Indigenous concerns, interests, and interpretations of development and well-being. This article reviews the conceptual basis for this recommendation and compares the activities of the UNPFII towards the development of appropriate indicators with the practices of the Australian government in measuring disadvantage among Indigenous peoples in that country. Indigenous peoples’ own perceptions and understandings of well-being are seen to extend beyond and sometimes conflict with conventional reporting frameworks with the latter constructed more around processes of governmentality than Indigenous priorities.     

Social Indicators and Living Conditions in the Netherlands

The Dutch Social en Cultural Planning Office(SCP) monitors social changes and socialservices, evaluates social policies, givesinformation about expected developments in thefuture and gives recommendations for furtherpolicy. Key issues are the assessment ofeconomic, demographic and social changes andthe influence of these factors on the socialand living conditions of the population. TheSCP uses social and economic indicators toexamine these developments. Besidesresearching specific themes (such as socialexclusion, the consequences of long-termunemployment, the social position of theelderly and use, costs and productivity ofsocial services) the SCP has developed anoverall monitoring tool for the livingconditions: the living conditions index (LCI).Nowadays the index is composed of indicatorswhich reflect conditions in eight areas:housing, health, consumer durables, leisureactivity, sport activity, socialparticipation, mobility and holiday. In thefuture, the SCP will attempt to develop aconceptual model that will link the livingconditions index to other social indices likelivability (housing and level of services),poverty and socioeconomic deprivation.     

Social Indicators Movement and Human Agency: Comment on Land and Michalos

This paper offers a critical comment on Land and Michalos (Soc Indic Res, 2017) and suggests a relay perspective to see the past achievements and future directions in the social indicators movement. In accordance with Land and Michalos, it suggests bringing the issue of human agency to the foreground, and offers an example using an index of the mother’s wellbeing for global comparison.     

Indicators of Social Quality and Social Exclusion at National and Community Level

This paper explores the domains and indicators ofsocial inclusion and exclusion and their interactionat national and community level, within the context ofthe social quality construct and the notions of Demosand Ethnos.Social inclusion/exclusion is conceptualiseddynamically within the overarching construct of socialquality. Micro and macro aspects of social quality arediscussed along with the relationship betweenorganisations and institutions and communities, groupsand individuals. The relationship between these levelsis explored in relation to Delantys distinctionbetween Demos and Ethos. Drawing on the work ofMcMillan and Chevis, two domains of community areidentified – identification and participation.Relevant attributes and indicators are suggested foreach domain.Interactions between social inclusion and exclusion atnational and community level are then exemplified,ranging from inclusion to exclusion both communallyand nationally via intermediate stages of inclusion inone realm and exclusion in the other. Social policyimplications of the relationship between national andcommunity exclusion are drawn, both formacro/institution and organisational levels (inrelation to legislation and society-wide serviceprovisions) and micro and group and citizen level (inrelation to social work).     

中国人口与社会发展关系:现状、趋势与问题

文章从人口转变、人口素质、人口结构、人口的社会分层及人口社会关系等方面,分析中国人口与社会发展的关系.中国正处于经济、社会迅速发展和变革的时代,作为社会基本构成要素的人口,其与社会发展的关系日趋复杂.必须对人口与社会发展之间关系给予高度重视,应该把解决中国人口社会问题及统筹协调人口与社会发展关系,作为人口发展政策和社会发展政策的一个基本方面.     

Child and Family Outcomes in New York and Tel AVIV: Using Social Indicators in a City Level Comparative Analysis

This article presents a comparative study in which social indicators were employed as a means to examine differences in living conditions and family and children outcomes on a local level. The study obtained household-level data on the well-being of children and families in two cities: New York (NYC) and Tel Aviv (TLV). Data were collected using computer assisted telephone interview (CATI) technology and random digit dialing (RDD). Telephone interviews were conducted with the randomly selected adults in English, Spanish and Chinese in NYC and in Hebrew in TLV. The study reported here documented differences in family and child well-being between the two cities. It further documented that family size and caregiver level of education play a similar role in both cities and their importance in regard to child and family outcomes. The significant differences found in adults’ and especially children’s outcomes were analyzed by the caregiver’s level of education and further support the need for policies that alleviate the burden of less educated caregivers and aim to improve the well-being of them and their families. The study demonstrates the relevance of social indicators at the local level, not only for measuring outcomes among specific populations, but also in regard to their possible implications for social policies, a most timely task in an era of social services devolution.     

Social Indicators of Substance Abuse Prevention: A Need-Based Assessment

We combine a variety of census and archival data to assess the relationships between social area characteristics and substance use. We found a substantial association between social area characteristics and substance use. We focus on intra and inter community, family, school and individual domain correlations to produce a prevention need-based score to rank communities from high to low need areas. Our analyses support the general risk and protective factor model advocated by Hawkins et al. (1992). As an important outcome of this work we suggest an objective criterion for selecting variables for the final model of the social indicators; suggest a set of weights for the selected factors and validate the selected factors with regard to substance abuse by linking the social indicator database to substance abuse outcome measures from another independent database. The selection criterion was based on intra domain correlations and proved to be robust. The weights were proportional to the information conveyed by each extracted factor. Analyses of intra-domain correlations are useful in identifying the types of prevention programs needed for each municipal area. Analyses of inter-domain correlations resulted in producing an overall need score based on social area characteristics. Many of the domains revealed more than one dimension, especially the school and the community/environment domains. Our analysis supports the use of social area characteristics in predicting the need for substance abuse prevention and treatment. It also suggests cautious and well informed decisions in selecting the indicators for a need based model.