Subjective and objective indicators of regional quality of life in Switzerland

Mainly because of data limitations, direct comparisons between subjective and objective indicators of local or regional quality of life have been inconclusive until now. The 1978 opinion survey among more than 33 000 Swiss recruits representing about 80% of their age cohort allows one for the first time to disaggregate survey data regionally for all parts of a whole country. The portrait of 97 regions and 25 cantons of Switzerland, based on the recruits' assessments of their native commune, seem adequately to reflect the rich variety of quality of life experiences in this extremely decentralized and culturally heterogenous country. Evidence from several procedures for validating the opinion survey data is presented, among which comparisons between the subjective and selected objective indicators of regional quality of life prove to be most conclusive. In general, the intercorrelations between these two types of social indicators are astonishingly high. Some consequences of this result for the subjective vs. objective social indicator controversy are elaborated. Methodological considerations on the peculiar elusiveness of the quality of life category follow, indicating the outline of a workable methodology of usable social indicators knowledge.