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Measuring quality of life: Economic, social, and subjective indicators. Social Indicators Research, 40(1), 189-216
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Thinkers have discussed the good life and the desirable society for millennia. In the last decades, scientists offered several alternative approaches to defining and measuring quality of life: social indicators such as health and levels of crime, subjective well-being measures (assessing people''s evaluative reactions to their lives and societies), and economic indices. These alternative indicators assess three philosophical approaches to well-being that are based, respectively, on normative ideals, subjective experiences, and the ability to select goods and services that one desires. The strengths and weaknesses of the various approaches are reviewed. It is argued that social indicators and subjective well-being measures are necessary to evaluate a society, and add substantially to the regnant economic indicators that are now favored by policy makers. Each approach to measuring the quality of life contains information that is not contained in the other measures.
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... They are based on fulfilling predetermined universal needs or criteria essential for human wellbeing [22]. Objective indicators of well-being primarily focus on material resources such as income, housing, and nutrition, as well as social attributes including education, health, safety, and political participation [23,24]. ...
Understanding the relationship between energy use and well-being is crucial for designing holistic energy policy. The latter has to both effectively mitigate climate change driven by current fossil-based energy systems as well as promote human development, which requires energy. While a significant body of research investigates this relationship, study designs differ significantly, so findings cannot be easily generalized. This machine learning-aided review provides an overview of the current state of the literature examining this relationship. We highlight and discuss methodological differences between the studies, including their perspective (top-down or bottom-up), spatial scope, and the respective energy and well-being indicators used. The review reveals that most research takes a top-down perspective, analyzing country-level data across multiple countries. These studies typically find a positive relationship between energy use and well-being, and most confirm the existence of a saturation effect. We reveal that countries in the Global South are underrepresented in current studies. Bottom-up studies focus on specific countries or country groups using household-level data, yielding more nuanced findings that can be further disaggregated by consumption domain. We find that energy and well-being indicators differ substantially across studies, yet the implications of this choice are not always sufficiently discussed. The review shows and discusses the current shift from production-to consumption-based energy indicators.
... Urban design is crucial for sustainable development in megacities. Fast-growing megacities without good urban planning can cause a lot of significant problems to residents such as traffic congestion and transportation accidents [1][2][3][4][5]. For this reason, policymakers need to realize the importance of sustainable development in urban design and plan both resident-friendly and environment-friendly cities. ...
The well-being of residents is a top priority for megacities, which is why urban design and sustainable development are crucial topics. Quality of Life (QoL) is used as an effective key performance index (KPI) to measure the efficiency of a city plan’s quantity and quality factors. For city dwellers, QoL for pedestrians is also significant. The walkability concept evaluates and analyzes the QoL in a walking scene. However, the traditional questionnaire survey approach is costly, time-consuming, and limited in its evaluation area. To overcome these limitations, the paper proposes using artificial intelligence (AI) technology to evaluate walkability data collected through a questionnaire survey using virtual reality (VR) tools. The proposed method involves knowledge extraction using deep convolutional neural networks (DCNNs) for information extraction and deep learning (DL) models to infer QoL scores. Knowledge distillation (KD) is also applied to reduce the model size and improve real-time performance. The experiment results demonstrate that the proposed approach is practical and can be considered an alternative method for acquiring QoL.
... One method relies on quantifiable economic or social indicators to reflect how well people's needs are being met. The other considers happiness, pleasure, satisfaction, and the like, and so-called "subjective well-being" (SWB) [22]. QoL is usually measured by either subjective indicators using surveys of human appraisals and satisfaction with life or by objective factors of the living environment using secondary data with relative weights [42]. ...
Quality of life (QoL) has received more and more attention from scholars and researchers from various fields such as healthcare, philosophy, psychology, sociology, and especially economics after many decades of focusing on income. However, researchers have faced many challenges to gain the proper measurement of QoL due to the contextually based concept. This study employs the primary data conducted in Ho Chi Minh City including 500 observations in 2022, with the application of partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) to construct a hierarchical model to measure the QoL of the dwellers in Ho Chi Minh City. The empirical model supports the multi-level hierarchical structure of the QoL. The statistically significant contribution of economic, social, and environmental dimensions in the integrated index has been confirmed. The environmental component shares the highest weight, followed by the economic factor. The social aspect contributes the least share in the quality- of-life index. Further analysis of the sub-criteria in each dimension has been made. The findings implicitly suggest the policy concentration on sustainable factors enhancement to raise the QoL. It was a milestone for policy makers to switch the focus from material to non-material factors in the life quality model in Vietnam.
Hizmetkâr liderlik, liderlerin takipçilerine hizmet etmesi ve kendi ihtiyaçlarından ziyade astlarının ihtiyaçlarına odaklanması gerektiği ilkesini içeren çağdaş bir liderlik teorisidir. Hizmetkâr liderler bir rol model olarak hizmet eder, güven uyandırır, bilgi verir, geri bildirim ve kaynak sağlar. Öte yandan bir örgütün varoluş nedeni olan amaçlarına ulaşması, her şeyden önce o örgütün sağlıklı olmasına bağlıdır. Sağlıklı bir örgüt, insanların kalmak ve çalışmak istedikleri bir örgüttür. Sağlıklı örgütlerde işgörenler adeta kendilerini örgütlerine adamış, istekli ve başarılı olacaklarına inanan kimselerdir. İşgörenler, çalıştıkları örgütlerle gurur duyarlar, örgüt içinde yararlı ve etkilidirler. Yaşam doyumu, bireyin kendisinin belirlediği ölçütler doğrultusunda yaşamının genel bir değerlendirmesi, hayata dair inanç ve değerlendirmelerinin toplamı olarak ifade edilebilir. Bu çalışmanın amacı, okul müdürlerinin hizmetkâr liderlik davranışları ile okulun örgüt sağlığı ve öğretmenlerin yaşam doyumu arasındaki ilişkiyi öğretmen algılarına dayalı olarak saptamaktır. Araştırma ilişkisel tarama modelinde tasarlanmış nicel bir çalışmadır. Araştırmanın örneklemini, basit tesadüfi örnekleme yöntemi ile seçilen Mardin merkez ve bağlı ilçelerdeki ilkokullarda görev yapan 542 öğretmen oluşturmaktadır. Çalışmada veriler Hizmetkâr Okul Liderliği, Örgüt Sağlığı ve Yaşam Doyumu ölçekleri kullanılarak elde edilmiştir. Öğretmenlerden elde edilen veriler korelasyon analizi tekniğiyle incelenmiştir. Çalışma sonucunda, okul müdürlerinin hizmetkâr liderlik davranışı ile okulun örgüt sağlığı ve öğretmenlerin yaşam doyumu arasında pozitif yönde ve orta düzeyde anlamlı bir ilişki olduğu saptanmıştır.
There is general consensus that self-rated health is the strongest predictor of subjective well-being during adulthood. What is not understood is the reason for the consistent relationship between these two variables. Other literature suggests that self-report health ratings are a function of both objective physical health status and neuroticism. This study examines the interrelationships among neuroticism, physician-rated health, self-rated health and subjective well-being concurrently and prospectively. Relationships are compared across gender, indicators of subjective well-being and times of measurement. The sample includes 243 men and 225 women in the cross-sectional analyses and 185 men and 165 women in the longitudinal analyses. As predicted, the results indicate that: 1.(1) self-rated health is significantly correlated with neuroticism, physician-rated health and subjective well-being;2.(2) neuroticism is significantly related to subjective well-being;3.(3) physician-rated health is weakly correlated with subjective well-being; and4.(4) partialling out neuroticism reduces the association between self-rated health and subjective well-being more than partialling out physician-rated health. Unexpectedly, neuroticism is significantly related to changes in subjective well-being.Future studies of the determinants of subjective well-being should include measures of neuroticism and physician-rated health.
The literature on subjective well-being (SWB), including happiness, life satisfaction, and positive affect, is reviewed in three areas: measurement, causal factors, and theory. Psychometric data on single-item and multi-item subjective well-being scales are presented, and the measures are compared. Measuring various components of subjective well-being is discussed. In terms of causal influences, research findings on the demographic correlates of SWB are evaluated, as well as the findings on other influences such as health, social contact, activity, and personality. A number of theoretical approaches to happiness are presented and discussed: telic theories, associationistic models, activity theories, judgment approaches, and top-down versus bottom-up conceptions.
This article assumes that social comparisons (a) constitute comparative judgments governed by the general process that applies to all judgments, (b) possess a common comparative structure including simple judgments of comparison stimuli and their juxtaposition, and (c) possess unique contents that determine the subjective meanings of comparison outcomes and psychological implications. Examined in these terms, classical social comparison theory is found wanting in two respects: (a) It conveys a relatively fixed notion of social comparison in which people are generally driven to compare and do so mostly with respect to similar others and predominantly for the sake of evaluative accuracy. (b) Its narrow scope excludes numerous significant issues of interest to social comparison research today. It is proposed that the present, multilevel approach is useful for ordering past social comparison research and provides a heuristically rich paradigm for future work. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Brock's comprehensive study of measures of quality of life in the area of healthcare shows that doctors and philosophers, in their quest for the best way to assess the quality of patients’ lives, have increasingly turned to a list of functional capabilities, much similar to those proposed in the capability literature and in the theory and practice of Scandinavian social scientists. The field of healthcare offers a rich ground for comparing, contrasting, and assessing different approaches.
The use of social indicators in policy decision-making systems as well as more descriptive analysis of societal well-being is investigated. The concept of "quality of life" as a tool of comparative social indicators research is analyzed. Inter-city comparisons of objective and subjective measures of well-being are presented and the distinctiveness of these two dimensions of the quality of life is documented. The article concludes with some observations on the implications that this distinctiveness has for the use of the concept "quality of life" in future social indicators research.
This article presents an analysis of data from the 1985 edition of the Places Rated Almanac by Boyer and Savageau. The data consist of nine composite variables constructed for 329 metropolitan areas of the United States. We present alternatives to the ranking method used in the original source and provide graphical displays to aid the reader in understanding the data.
Reports an error in the original article by E. Suh et al (Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 1996 [May], Vol 70 [5], 1091–1102). On page 1097, the headings for the second and third columns of Tables 4 and 5 were incorrectly labeled R–2 and R–2 change. The headings should read R and R change, respectively. (The following abstract of this article originally appeared in record 1996-01753-014.) The effect of life events on subjective well-being (SWB) was explored in a 2-year longitudinal study of 115 participants. It was found that only life events during the previous 3 months influenced life satisfaction and positive and negative affect. Although recent life events influenced SWB even when personality at Time 1 was controlled, distal life events did not correlate with SWB. SWB and life events both showed a substantial degree of temporal stability. It was also found that good and bad life events tend to covary, both between individuals and across periods of the lives of individuals. Also, when events of the opposite valence were controlled, events correlated more strongly with SWB. The counterintuitive finding that good and bad events co-occur suggests an exciting avenue for explorations of the structure of life events. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Myers and Diener (1995) asked “Who is happy?” but examined the question of who is more and who is less happy In fact, most people report a positive level of subjective well-being (SWB), and say that they are satisfied with domains such as marriage, work, and leisure People in disadvantaged groups on average report positive well-being, and measurement methods in addition to self-report indicate that most people's affect is primarily pleasant Cross-national data suggest that there is a positive level of SWB throughout the world, with the possible exception of very poor societies In 86% of the 43 nations for which nationally representative samples are available the mean SWB response was above neutral Several hypotheses to explain the positive levels of SWB are discussed