Objective and subjective indicators of community evaluation: A Pennsylvania assessment

The relationships between subjective and objective measures of well-being were assessedusing data from a survey of Pennsylvania residents and county-level statistical measures complied from secondary sources. Following Ross, Bluestone, and Hines (1979), objective social indicators were derived to measure socioeconomic status, family status, health status, and alienation for Pennsylvania countries. These indices were only modestly intercorrelated, suggesting that they measured somewhat different ideas. Subjective well-being was assessed by asking more than 3000 individual respondents to a mail survey to rate the quality of their communities. Responses were dichotomized and logistic regression used to assess the effects of the objective indicators of county well-being to individual community evaluations. The relationships were small, and inconsistent. Implications of the findings are discussed.