Showing papers in "Social Indicators Research in 1975"

Does Money Buy Satisfaction

Abstract: There was no change in the distribution of satisfaction with the standard of living among Detroit area wives between 1955 and 1971, although current-dollar median family income more than doubled and constant-dollar income increased by forty per cent. Cross-sectional variation in satisfaction is, however, related to income and, in particular, to relative position in the income distribution. Whereas regressions of satisfaction on income in current or constant dollars, or the logarithm thereof, suggest that at the same income there was less satisfaction in 1971 than in 1955, there is no significant year effect in the equation using the income-position variable. Easterlin’s thesis that rising levels of income do not produce rises in the average subjective estimate of welfare is supported. The thesis raises difficult questions for students of subjective social indicators.

The Quality of Life in Large American Cities: Objective and Subjective Social Indicators

Abstract: 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 paper 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.

On the Multivariate Structure of Wellbeing

Abstract: A mapping sentence is provided for defining the universe of observations of wellbeing. According to this, assessment of wellbeing is attitudinal. Data from several studies verify that the First Law of Attitude holds for wellbeing. These data also show the structure of the interrelationships among the variables to be that of intermeshing cylindrexes, in an SSA space of four dimensions. Areas of life play the role of polarizing facets, while self-versus-community and situation-versus-treatment serve as axial facets. Modulating facets include primary-to-secondary interaction, and generality-to-specificity.

What is a quality of life indicator

Abstract: The concepts of indicator, social indicator, and life quality indicator are defined and exemplified. An indicator is characterized as an observable variable assumed to point to, or estimate, some other (usually unobservable) variable. It is, then, a symptom of something else. An indicator-indicated relation can be functional or it can consist in statistical correlation. It is a corrigible hypothesis, not an arbitrary definition. As such it is best justified when incorporated into a theory, e.g. a mathematical model. A social indicator is of course an indicator belonging to some sociological context. Finally, a quality of life indicator is one that allows one to estimate degrees of well-being. Some of the problems posed by this definition are discussed. The upshot of the discussion is that a better understanding and assessment of the quality of life calls for more intense theoretical and methodological work rather than an increase in the amount of social and environmental statistics. Here as elsewhere data without ideas are sterile when not misleading.

Measures of the perceived overall quality of life

Abstract: Respondents participating in a national quality of life study were asked to assess their levels of satisfaction or dissatisfaction with each of a set of fifteen domains of their lives. They were also asked to describe their lives as a whole, using both satis-faction and semantic-differential types of scales. Canonical correlation analysis was used to find the combinations of domain-specific and global items with the highest correlation. The two indices derived from this analysis, the Index of Well-being and the Index of Domain Satisfactions, have been examined in relation to a variety of demographic and situational variables, including age, indicators of socioeconomic status, employment status, and size of community. The relationships discovered provide some preliminary evidence for the validity of these indices. The reliability of the measures (as measured cross-sectionally) and their stability over a period of some eight months are both acceptably high. We conclude that both of these measures form acceptable indicators of the perceived overall quality of life.

Quality of affect and self-evaluated happiness

Abstract: The concept of quality of affect is used to develop variables descriptive of how a person is feeling. The extent of marked positive affect, the extent of marked negative affect and the modal hedonic level or modal quality of affect are presented as three components of a quality of affect measure. Alternative two-component measures are also developed. Findings based on interviews with a sample of Washington County, Maryland adults are presented. Selfevaluated happiness was found to have a strong positive relationship with quality of affect. However, while the quality of affect measures are designed to give equal weight to positive affect and negative affect, self-evaluated happiness was found to be related more strongly to positive affect than to negative affect.

Perspective Canada as a social report

Abstract: This paper reviews the first attempt at social reporting in Canada, Perspective Canada, contrasting it with social reports from other nations, in particular the United States' publication, Social Indicators, 1973. Some future directions and structure for Perspective Canada are suggested, and the paper concludes with a discussion of the importance of the bold use of model building in the analysis of social indicators data, and the innovative use of graphical methods for social reporting.

A social change index-an objective means to discern and measure the relative current social condition of cities, towns, and their sub-communities

Abstract: A social change index has been developed in response to a social planning need to have a means whereby the current social pathology of communities may be identified on an objective basis. The index is derived from a combination of social indicators which are reported by census tract by the State of Rhode Island on an annual basis. The index is particularly useful for the inter-decennial years because high mobility rates, particularly in central cities (up to 80% in some areas of these cities), cause census data to be unrepresentative in many instances for these years. In addition to serving as a means to identify social needs and problem areas, the index may be used for priority ranking of need for social program services, program monitoring, and program evaluation. The State of Rhode Island is expected to institute a Committee on Social Statistics among whose primary responsibilities will be to encourage state agencies to publish their social statistics by census tracts in their annual reports. It is presumed, consequently, that a larger number of current social indicators will be available to be included in the social change index and increase its accuracy.

The social costs of cancer

Abstract: The annual social costs of cancer, exclusive of economic costs such as medical costs and loss of earnings while incapacitated, are systematically developed. The social costs of cancer are believed significant because they may exceed the economic costs, and resource allocation on the basis of the economic costs alone distorts the socially optimal allocations of such resources.

National approaches to developing social indicators

Abstract: The basis for selecting social indicators in ten national publications released to date are primarily measures of welfare and measures reflecting public policy and social concerns. The orientation of the volumes from the U.S., France, Canada, Norway, Philippines, Malaysia, Great Britain are discussed. The selection of time series that reflect social processes is proposed and an orientation presented around the concepts of the vital processes, socialization and participation, mobility and stratification, maintaining security, and control and coordination by which social order is attained. A bibliography identifies the national reports known to the author.

Objective and subjective determinants of prospective residential mobility

Abstract: The increasing interest in subjective as well as objective measures of well-being raises the issue of the relative importance of these two different types of measures when they are included as independent variables in analytical or predictive models. In the research reported here, survey data are used to evaluate the relative importance of objective and subjective indicators in providing an understanding of why households desire to move. Overall, it is found that subjective indicators add considerably to the explanation of mobility inclinations over and above that contributed by objective indicators. A comparison of explanatory powers for the full sets of objective and subjective predictors within two length of residence subgroups indicates some interesting differences, however. Objective and subjective predictors are close in explanatory power for longer-term residents, while subjective measures are considerably more important for shorter-term residents.

A comparison using perceptual indicators: Job satisfaction

Abstract: Results of an Austrian-German comparison pertaining to different aspects of job satisfaction are presented. It is argued that even at this early stage in their development, perceptual indicators can be used to reveal overall trends and to point up trouble spots where socio-economic action on the part of the authorities is called for.

A social indicator based on time allocation

Abstract: The authors have developed a social indicator, called Lambda, that has as its base the manner in which individuals allocate their time among various life activities. This indicator does not suffer from the usual demand characteristics and experimenter bias associated with most subjective social indicators, i.e., those based on question-naires. It is not a single rate indicator in the sense of suicide rate. Lambda is a weighted sum social indicator with both subjective and objective aspects. The weights are decided by the population under consideration and not by the investigators or some other outside agents. The elements to be summed are the frequency functions for the discrepancies that arise when individuals state the amount of time they would like to spend in an activitiy versus the amount of time they actually spend at the activity. There are frequency functions for each activity. The properties of this indicator are discussed in detail. A pilot study comparing Lambda to another social indicator and some demographic variables was conducted with 1012 undergraduate students. The results of the pilot study show a high correlation between Lambda and the other social indicator. The results are presented. Lambda is currently being used by the Gallup organization.

Philosophy and limitations of environmental indices

Abstract: The number of pitfalls strewn about the landscape of environmental indices is large, and as yet we have only a weak flashlight to help us grope through the dark. I have tried to illustrate a few of the main traps and mazes. There are undoubtedly more. Because of the importance of measures of the environment to a true quality of life index, we must persevere in this task.

Indicators of development in Wisconsin counties: 1970

Abstract: This research focused on the problem of measuring economic and social ‘development’. Existing theories of economic and social change were used to select important indicators of development. For each indicator, principal components analysis was used to collapse several related variables into a single index. The indexes were labeled economic base, economic growth, personal economic opportunity, health inputs, health status, educational inputs, and educational attainment. In each case, selection of variables and indexes were constrained by two factors: (1) the data had to be available from secondary sources; (2) the selection of the indicators, and the procedure, had to be easily understood and cheaply and quickly repeatable by state or local agency personnel. In general the indexes were consistent with each other and the variables enter into the indexes with the expected sign. The high correlation among the indexes suggests that they may indeed measure some underlying attribute, development. There is no rigorous or absolute measure of development against which to check the validity of the indexes. However, the results have been judged ‘reasonable’ measures of development by the state agency staff and local development groups which have utilized the indexes.

Accounting for the environment

Abstract: The paper discusses a major project to introduce imputed values of environmental services into the national accounts. After a short discussion of how the project relates to the social measurement research underway at the National Bureau of Economic Research, the accounting principles are briefly presented. Preliminary accounting data, as well as the results of a study of the distribution of air pollution damage, which relied on these data, are also presented. The paper includes a brief discussion of the policy and research implications suggested by these preliminary results. Finally, the paper closes with a technical appendix demonstrating that a sector's contribution to air pollution emissions may be a poor indicator of its contribution to social damage.

Social indicators: A statistician's view

Abstract: In the following we consider the problem areas of social indicator research which are of concern to the statistician and in which he can prove helpful. Among these are the purposes of social indicators, what social variables should be considered as conceivable variables related to quality of life, what data should be collected taking in account the difficulty of not being able to directly measure variables of interest, how does one collect the data (which is usually in the form of a time series) guarding against multicollinearity, and how should the collected data be handled and analyzed. We discuss why in social indicator research the secular trends, cyclical movements, seasonal variations and irregular fluctuations must be taken into account. Techniques are discussed for relating lead indicators in one time period to coincident indicators in another period. Finally we present a select bibliography in canonical correlation, forecasting, indicators and index numbers, path analysis, regression analysis, simulation techniques, time series analysis and other areas useful in analyzing social indicator data.

Stochastic indicators of occupational mobility, Canada: 1951–1961

Abstract: Though various studies on spatial mobility are available, little is known about occupational mobility in Canada. This study is concerned with the estimation of Canadian occupational mobility from aggregate census data. The process of occupational mobility is characterized as a stationary Markov chain and certain meaningful conditions are imposed on the transition probabilities to convert the estimation strategy into a linear programming problem. Cross-section data for 1951 and 1961 are employed for estimation purposes. The study reveals that in 1951–61, the Canadian females had higher rates of mobility than the males.

Crimes and socio-economic environments

Abstract: The purpose of this note is to study the relationship between crimes and the socio-economic environment in the metropolitan areas of the United States. In this study we define total crime rate per 100,000 population as a linear function of (i) per capita personal income, (ii) the unemployment rate (iii) the migration rate, (iv) racial imbalance, (v) climate, and (vi) males as a percentage of total population. Our statistical results confirm the hypothesis that social and economic conditions cause crime.

Systematic choice among multiple outputs of public projects without prices

Abstract: Benefit-cost analysis has been applied to the evaluation of public investment projects whose outputs have market derived prices. When prices are attached to all inputs and outputs it is possible to systematically rank projects by net return and to derive some implications for budget size. However, a consistent and explicit basis for ranking projects with non-priced outputs has been lacking. A step by step procedure is developed for systematic choice when some or all outputs have no market value reference points. The method makes clear the information that can be provided by the analyst and that which must be provided by the political process. The procedure gives no easy answer to value conflicts among members of society, but it does allow citizens to determine if public officials are making project choices consistent with announced objectives and explicit value weights. Such procedures could facilitate public participation in project choice and monitoring the behavior of public officials.

Improving program evaluation with reciprocal indicators

Abstract: Recent interest in social indicators of change has emphasized the unidimensional monitoring of social programs. Reciprocal indicators permit the recording of two-dimensional, or contrasting, trends within a selected system thereby providing efficient evaluation of program effectiveness. A religious indicator of congregation size, illustrates the differences in these two forms of indicators. Suggestions are made regarding application of reciprocal indicators and the policy implications associated with such use.

Social class and delinquency in London boroughs

Abstract: Early empirical studies carried out in the US of geographically distributed or ‘ecological’ delinquency rates have tended to stress the importance of environmental, attitudinal (anomic) variables and institutional factors as the principal determinants of urban delinquency More recent research however has indicated that delinquency is highly related with socio-economic status, rather than with purely ecological factors or with ‘anomie’ In the present paper we present new evidence, based on published data, on the causal structure of delinquency in metropolitan London boroughs by means of a combined use of two well known multivariate techniques-regression analysis and factor analysis It is found that 50% of the variance of London annual delinquency rates is explained by two indicators of socio-economic status or class used as independent regression variables In addition, when social class is controlled for, half of the remaining variance is accounted for by indicators of urban land use and post-war population mobility Thus 75% of the total observed delinquency variance is explained by the regression equation Finally, the quantified indicators provide a useful typology of London boroughs which permits a characterisation of urban areas in terms of their crimogenic properties