MEASURING QUALITY OF LIFE: ECONOMIC, SOCIAL, AND SUBJECTIVE INDICATORS

“Major personality traits that are associated with SWB are extraversion and neuroticism (Costa and McCrae, 1980; Diener et al., 1992), optimism (Scheier and Carver, 1993), and self-esteem (Campbell, 1981; Diener and Diener, 1995).”

“The third approach considers life satisfaction as a primary constituent factor of the quality of life [54].”

“Adaptation of subjective well-being (SWB) has become an important topic in gerontological research in the past decades (e.g., Diener & Suh, 1997; Mroczek & Spiro, 2005).”

“Life satisfaction is part of the scientific measurement of “subjective wellbeing” and is a subjective assessment of an individual’s own life evaluated in relation to a range of subjective and objective conditions (Diener & Suh, 1997).”

“It is argued that individuals’ cognitive sense of life satisfaction may be affected by adaptation, personality/dispositional characteristics and social comparisons ( Diener and Suh 1997: 191; Keith 2001:52; Rapley 2003:14).”

“It is a tradition that has made use of the term ‘subjective wellbeing’ (a synonym often used interchangeably with hedonic wellbeing or in colloquial terms ‘happiness’), comprising the measures of life satisfaction, pleasant and unpleasant affect (Diener & Suh, 1997).”

“…engagement as a precursor for higher wellbeing has been identified by Lim and Putnam (2010), Winkelmann and Winkelmann www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 50 (1998), Ellison and Levin (1998), Diener and Suh (1997), Veenhoven (1996), Wilson (1967), Helliwell (2008), and Inglehart (2010).”

“Diener and Suh (1997) suggest three primary ways of assessing the quality of an individual's life.”

“The former refers to cognitive component of SWB, while the latter two refer to affective components of SWB (Diener, 1984, 2000; Diener & Suh, 1997).”

“dividual experiences and helps to understand and communicate the interpretations, priorities and needs of people (Diener and Suh, 1997; Max-Neef, 1991, 1995).”

“Diener and Suh (1997) provide convincing evience that subjective indicators are valid measures of what people erceive to be important to their happiness and well-being.”

“Although there are several strengths of social indicators such as the HDI, there are also several notable limitations (see Diener, Lucas, Schimmack, & Helliwell, 2009, and Diener & Suh, 1997, for detailed criticism).”

“They discussed how these tools are a basic necessity to help measure the development of society (Diener and Suh, 1997; Hicks and Streeten, 1979) and how they can contribute to reporting (Adams and Frost, 2008).”

“, 2003; Mather and Carstensen, 2003), maintain well-being (Diener and Suh, 1997; Diener and Lucas, 1999) and have stable rates of depression (e.”

“Subjective indicators are sometimes necessary in business forecasting [72] and business model evaluation [72–74].”

“... on specific life domains, such as satisfaction with interpersonal relationships (Lewis and Lyo 1986; Michalos and Zumbo 2000), with work (Andrew and Withey 1976; Kousha and Mohseni 2000; Michalos et al. 2000; Tsou and Liu 2001), with marriage (Blair 1998 Michalos et al. 2000; Tsou and Liu 2001), with personal heal…”

“Conflicting trends in American culture have been the subject of popular concern: As wealth and comfort have increased, why have well-being and mental health declined (Campbell, 1981; Myers, 2000)? Why have such developments as easier access to education, information, communication, health care, and travel not produced…”

“5 For theoretical studies exploring the issue of measuring and/or comparing quality of life using welfaretheoretic foundations, we refer the interested reader to Nussbaum and Sen (1993), Diener (2000), Diener and Suh (1997), Costanza et al.”

“A more general discussion has taken place on the relationship between objective participation and subjective well-being in national populations, and useful information can be drawn from this [7, 19 ].”

“It goes beyond the description of physical living circumstances and focuses on individuals’ evaluation of their lives using their own standards, and thus has become a focus of social science research (Schneider, 1976; Diener and Suh, 1997; Diener et al., 1999).”

“The concept of quality of the life (QOL) has recently gained importance for various reasons, including understanding the quality of urban environment [20], assessing quality of urban life [21-23], ascertaining people’s satisfaction about their living environment [24,25], evaluating the effectiveness of medical treatme…”

“SWB has a U-shaped relationship with age (Diener and Suh 1997), being at its lowest when people are around the age of 40, and then gradually increasing.”

“So from the perspective of policy makers and support providers, they need a standard instrument to measure the quality of life for senior citizens to refine their scheme on resource allocation [5].”

“(Diener and Suh 1997; Sirgy et al. 2000; Sirgy and Cornwell 2002; McCrea et al. 2005).”

“The need to complement national income accounts with subjective well-being as a broader aspect of human life has emerged as a growing and hotly debated topic in the literature (Diener and Suh 1997; Costanza et al. 2007, Fleurbaey 2009; Stiglitz et al. 2009).”

“…in California and Morocco based on the per capita GDP ratios in comparison to Israel [used for calculating expected labour and lodging costs (see Diener & Suh 1997); per capita GDP of Israel 19 927 USD (World Bank 2008)], travel expenses compared to Israel (based on cheapest car rental and…”

“Positive and negative affect, which together make up the affective domain of subjective well-being (Diener & Suh, 1997), is also one of the indicators of happiness (subjective well-being) and psychological adjustment.”

“Not only do values influence which needs and aspirations people have but different values also cause people to evaluate the same resources in different manners (Campbell et al. 1976; Diener and Suh 1997; Lane 2000).”

“Life satisfaction, or quality of life, assumes that a person has the ability to assess how they feel about their life in context of their own relative standards (Diener and Suh 1997).”

“The focus on life satisfaction draws from the recognition that subjective perceptions of life circumstances play a key role in how individuals experience their lives, as addressed in the work of Diener and Suh (1997) and others (Campbell, 1976; Forgeard, Jayawickreme, Kern, & Seligman, 2011).”

“Although there is a literature on subjective well-being that finds ‘surprisingly small correlations’ between income and self-reported happiness ~see Diener and Suh 1997, 201!, economics as a discipline relies heavily on the idea that annual money income does matter – and any degree of diminishing…”

“Psychological wellbeing refers to the internal experiences of individuals and their own perception of their lives (Diener & Suh, 1997) .”

“We unreservedly acknowledge these constraints, but take comfort from observations by Diener and Suh (1997) and Schimmack and Oishi (2005) who note that self-reported measures of well-being possess adequate validity and reliability.”

“The survey instrument also included 6 quality of life indicators based on past research in that area (Atkinson, 1982; Campbell, 1981; Diener & Suh, 1997), with each item measured on an 11-point scale ranging from 0–10: 1 (Assessment of the [metropolitan] area) and 2 (the neighborhood you live…”

“Measures of Social Indicators and subjective Well-being are both necessary to evaluate the life quality within a society ( Diener and Suh 1997 ).”

“Subjective well-being refers to the individual's cognitive and affective judgment of his or her entire life-situation, as well as of specific life domains ( Diener & Suh, 1997 ).”

“Due to the weak correlations usually observed between objective and subjective QoL measures, some authors have emphasized the complimentary character of these two approaches and suggest using both simultaneously [49,70,71].”

““Effects” refer to moods and emotions, whereas life satisfaction is rather cognitive ( Diener and Suh, 1997, 200).”

“Measuring quality of life: A number of researchers such as Mc Call ([29]), Mayers([35]), Davidson and Cotter ([10]), O'Brien and Ayidya([36]), Grayson and Young ([17]), Diener and Suh([12]), Turksever and Atalik [49] have reviewed literature on QOL and there is general agreement th at a meaningful definition of QOL mu…”

“The third definition of quality of life is in terms of the experience of individuals such as feelings of joy, pleasure, contentment, and life satisfaction (Diener and Suh 1997).”

“The underlying assumption is that well-being can be defined by people’s conscious experiences—in terms of hedonic feelings or cognitive satisfactions’ [Diener and Suh 1997: 191].”

“There is widespread agreement among scholars (Brock, 1993; Diener and Suh, 1997; Johansson, 2002; Sirgy et al., 2006) that the quality of life can be analysed with three methodological and theoretical approaches, economic, social, and subjective, which by and large make use in empirical…”

“…resonate with studies on age and job satisfaction that have found no link between chronological age and job satisfaction (Baird et al., 2010; Diener and Suh, 1997; Lieberman, 1970): remaining time per se – determined by chronological age or psychological time perception – is not crucial to…”

“Diener and Suh [13] suggest that in high-SWB and high-income countries, there may be less social support and security when life goes badly as well as higher chances of loneliness which may lead to higher rates of suicide.”

“Income has a stronger effect on happiness among the poor than among the wealthy ( Diener & Suh, 1997 ).”

“Subjective personal quality of life Given that QoL includes how people think and feel about their lives, it has been argued that attempts to measure well-being must include people’s own subjective judgement as well as the objective factors that influence QoL (Diener & Suh, 1997; Diener et al, 1999).”

“For instance, economic growth and industrialization can transform personal values about how and where to live, mere crime and corruption rates do not capture the psychological cost of victimization that may induce people to move, and the notion of a ‘‘better life’’ in itself is highly subjective and may differ for tho…”

“Such a comprehensive approach needs to integrate objective and subjective information (Diener and Suh 1997; Berger-Schmitt and Noll 2000; Dasgupta 2000; Goossens et al. 2007).”