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Social Indicators and Quality of Life Research: Background, Achievements and

Current Trends

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Heinz-Herbert Noll

Social Indicators and Quality of Life Research:

Background, Achievements and Current Trends

At the beginning of the 21st century, social indicators and quality of life re-
search are well-established fields of social science in many countries around
the world. Numerous book publications, entries in handbooks and encyclo-
paedias, specialised journals and newsletters, national and international pro-
fessional organisations, conferences and congresses and not least regular
courses taught within university curricula are some indications of the suc-
cessful career of two rather new branches of social research. This article will
summarise the background and objectives, the major approaches and appli-
cations and will discuss some of the recent developments as well as further
prospects of these multidisciplinary research fields.

1. Background and Objectives of the Social Indicators Movement

and Quality of Life Research

As a field of social science social indicators research was born in the United
States in the mid-1960s. Actually it came into being as part of an attempt of
the American space agency NASA to detect and anticipate the impact and
side effects of the American space program on U.S. society. The project
came to the conclusion that there was almost a complete lack of adequate
data but also of concepts and appropriate methodologies for this purpose.
Presumably it was Raymond Bauer, the director of this project, who invented
the term and the basic concept of ‘social indicators’. In his definition, social
indicators were “statistics, statistical series, and all other forms of evidence
that enable us to assess where we stand and are going with respect to our val-
ues and goals” (Bauer, 1966: 1).
Although the so called “social indicators movement” obviously is a child
of the sixties and early seventies of the last century, there are several predeces-
sors of modern social indicators research. Among the most important are the
trend reports by W. F. Ogburn, in particular the well-known report on Recent
Social Trends in the United States, which was published in 1933 by U.S. Presi-

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 Heinz-Herbert Noll

dent Hoover’s Committee on Social Trends. The research conducted by Jan

Drewnowski and an expert commission of the United Nations is considered to
be another root of social indicators research in as far as these research activities
were supposed to improve the measurement of the level of living by identifying
components of welfare and by constructing respective indicators.1 Another im-
portant predecessor whose merits in this respect have not yet been sufficiently
acknowledged is the Italian statistician and criminologist Alfredo Niceforo. In
his book on Les indices numérique de la civilisation et du progrès (Niceforo,
1921), he made an important attempt to identify quantifiable symptoms of liv-
ing conditions in a broad sense – indicators in our modern terminology – in or-
der to measure and monitor levels and degrees of civilisation and social prog-
ress across time and space.2 Not considering the much older tradition of social
statistics in general, Niceforo thus may be considered the originator of an ap-
proach of comprehensive welfare and quality of life measurement as it is the
concern of modern social indicators and quality of life research3.
The innovative ideas, concepts, and early approaches of social indicators
research, which were first developed and discussed in the United States, spread
out to European and other countries and were taken up by international organi-
sations soon after. The OECD started its well known program of work on
social indicators in 1970 (Bertrand, 1986/1987), and roughly at the same time,
the Social and Economic Council of the United Nations initiated a project
directed by the later Nobel-Prize laureate Richard Stone in order to develop the
most ambitious System of Social and Demographic Statistics, in which social
indicators were supposed to play a key role. The early stages of social
indicators research did not only exert an enormous scientific influence, but
these activities were also undertaken with a strong sense of commitment and a
sense of mission and thus became well known as the ‘social indicators
movement’.
Obviously the rise and rapid diffusion of this ‘movement’ was related to
the particular political climate of the late 1960s and early 1970s. It was a period
of prosperity, when for the first time in some of the most developed Western
societies doubts were raised about economic growth as the major goal of social
progress. The ‘social costs’ of economic growth (Mishan 1967), ‘public
poverty’ as well as the existence of ‘isles of individual poverty’ as the

1
See Drewnowski (1970).
2
By treating the topic of ‘happiness’ within the last chapter of his volume and
discussing the question whether people subjectively perceive improvements of living
conditions as social progress, Niceforo did also touch upon another essential topic of
modern social indicators and quality of life research. This is the correspondence
between objective conditions and subjective perceptions and evaluations. In his
opinion, people are unlikely to become happier even if there is social progress and a
betterment of living conditions from an objective point of view.
3
Since some of his works – for example, “È Possibile un Sistema di Indici Quantita-
tivi” (Niceforo, 1916-17) - have been published before in several volumes of ‘Rivista
di Antropologia’ (1916-1919) as well as in a book on ‘La Misura Della Vita’ (1919),
these ideas were born even well before the 1920s. I thank my Italian colleague
Filomena Maggino for her help to get access to the early publications by Niceforo.

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dark side of general ‘private affluence’ were emphasised and received public
attention in the political debates of the time. Against this background, it
seemed to be arguable whether ‘more’ should continue to equal ‘better’, and
it increasingly became a public claim to prefer quality to quantity. To some
degree the changes towards ‘post-materialism’ (Inglehart, 1977) in value ori-
entations and perspectives of social development did reflect the diminishing
marginal utility of material wealth, but they were also due to the emerging
characteristics of a post-industrial society. Thus, the concept of ‘quality of
life’ was born as an alternative to the more and more questionable concept of
material prosperity in an affluent society and was considered the new, multi-
dimensional and much more complex goal of societal development. From
this viewpoint, quality of life was considered the developmental goal of af-
fluent, post-industrial societies concerned about their ecological basis and
facing the limits of further growth (Glatzer, 1992).
The optimistic idea that societal structures and processes could be compre-
hensively modelled and actively guided by politics used to be another charac-
teristic of the specific political climate of this period. Concepts like the ‘active
society’ and an active social policy promised a transition from reactive politics
of ‘muddling through’ to a new and much more rational, knowledge-based and
efficient model of governance. However, a model of policy making which aims
at such goals needs to be based on information that enables decision makers to
recognise problems early in order to set priorities and to monitor and evaluate
the impact, efficiency and success of programmes and measures.
Given this background, the rise of social indicators and empirical quality
of life research was to a considerable extend a result of the formation of new
goals of societal development, reflecting changes in value orientations. At the
same time, it was a response to the increased demand for information created
by an active social policy and by the challenge to operationalise and to quan-
tify its core formula ‘quality of life’.

2. Definitions, Properties and Functions of Social Indicators

Among the numerous definitions of social indicators, two more recent ones are
particularly significant and worth mentioning. The first stems from the
Australian Bureau of Statistics: “Social indicators are measures of social
well-being which provide a contemporary view of social conditions and
monitor trends in a range of areas of social concern over time” (McEwin,
1995: 314-315). The second one appears in a United Nations document: “So-
cial indicators can be defined as statistics that usefully reflect important so-
cial conditions and that facilitate the process of assessing those conditions
and their evolution. Social Indicators are used to identify social problems that
require action, to develop priorities and goals for action and spending, and to
assess the effectiveness of programmes and policies” (United Nations, 1994).

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 Heinz-Herbert Noll

Both definitions stress the focus of social indicators on living conditions in

areas of social concern and the function of monitoring these conditions over
time. The definition by the United Nations is much more ambitious than the
first one, since it considers the uses of social indicators not merely in de-
scription and trend monitoring, but also in identifying problems, priority set-
ting and the assessment of programs and policies. Under which conditions
and to which extend social indicators may fulfil these latter purposes seems
to be controversial, however.
Depending on their specific uses, social indicators are supposed to show
certain properties. In general, social indicators should reflect a particular so-
cial idea, be valid and meaningful, be sensitive to the underlying phenome-
non, be summary in nature, be available as time series, be able to be disag-
gregated, be intelligible and easily interpreted, and relate where appropriate
to other indicators (McEwin, 1995: 315). Beyond the more general properties
of social indicators, which are rather broadly agreed upon, Judith Innes has
developed “criteria about what makes a good indicator to use in public deci-
sions“ (Innes, 1990: 110). According to her considerations, “the measure
must be pertinent to questions of concern; the concepts underlying the meas-
ures must be clear and agreed upon; the measure must relate to the concept
which it is assumed to, and do so in a well understood way; the methods to
produce the measure must provide reliable results, measuring what they pur-
port to without hidden or unexpected bias; and the measure must be under-
standable and understood in its concept and limitations“ (Innes, 1990: 110).
Also “major parties to discussion on opposite sides must accept the measure”
and it should “relate to more complex analytical models” (Innes, 1990: 110).
Beyond the general goal of improving the information base of societies,
two basic functions of social indicators have to be distinguished: monitoring
of social change and measurement of individual and societal welfare.
In the broadest sense, social indicators are regarded as instruments for the
regular observation and analysis of social change. The notion of social
indicators as ‘indicators of social change’ (Sheldon and Moore, 1968) can be
traced back to Ogburn and has mainly been stressed by scholars in his tradi-
tion (Smelser and Gerstein 1986). From this point of view, social indicators
are - according to Wolfgang Zapf – “all data which enlighten us in some way
about structures and processes, goals and achievements, values and opinions"
(Zapf, 1977b: 236). Within this approach, the focus is on developing stan-
dards to register and monitor progress in modernisation of a society and the
related problems and consequences. Tasks deriving from those functions are
in particular: the description of social trends, the explanation of these trends,
the identification of relevant relationships between different developments,
and the investigation of the consequences of those changes in time series of
indicators (Land, 1983). In this sense, the primary function is not the direct
guidance and efficiency control of political programmes, but the broad so-
cietal enlightenment and the provision of an information base which supports
the policy making process in an indirect way. Policy makers need to be in-

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formed about trends of social change, as for example changes in value

orientations and life styles, even if these changes are not the target of specific
programmes and political measures. The volumes on Recent Social Trends in
the United States, France, Quebec, Germany, Italy, Russia and Bulgaria, as
they have been published by the international research group on Comparative
Charting of Social Change, may be regarded as recent examples of monitoring
trends of general social change within this tradition.4
The primary function of social indicators may however be regarded as the
measurement of levels, distributions and changes in individual and societal
welfare. Welfare development has been considered a specific dimension of the
comprehensive processes of modernisation (Zapf, 1993). As measures of
welfare or quality of life, social indicators are required to display specific
characteristics. The indicators should (1) be related to individuals or private
households rather than other social aggregates; (2) be oriented towards societal
goals; and (3) measure the output or outcome rather than the input of social
processes or policies. As welfare indicators, social indicators always have a
direct normative relationship and one should be able to interpret changes in
indicators unequivocally as improvement or deterioration of welfare or the
quality of life. It is in this sense that Mancur Olson has in his well-known
definition called a social indicator “a statistic of direct normative interest which
facilitates concise, comprehensive and balanced judgements about the
condition of major aspects of a society. It is in all cases a direct measure of
welfare and is subject to the interpretation that if it changes in the ‘right’
direction, while other things remain equal, things have gotten better, or people
are 'better off'" (Department of Health, Education and Welfare, 1969: 97).
The assessment and monitoring of well-being is also the major focus of the
broader field of quality of life research. But beyond the construction and
application of indicators for social monitoring and reporting, quality of life
research is also concerned with more general problems of welfare
measurement, conceptual considerations and the analysis and explanation of
interrelations between the various ‘objective’ and ‘subjective’ components and
dimensions of the complex phenomenon of quality of life.

3. Approaches and Research Directions

Since social indicators and quality of life research are essentially concerned
with measuring and monitoring welfare and quality of life, the notions and
theoretical underpinnings of these concepts are of crucial importance: “In or-
der to measure quality of life, one must have a theory of what makes up a
good life” (Cobb, 2000: 6).5 There is a variety of such theories and notions of

4
See the respective book series published by McGill-Queen’s University Press.
5
See also G. Esping-Andersen (2000: 1): “What does it mean to enjoy good or bad
welfare? What kind of welfare should be optimized?”
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 Heinz-Herbert Noll

what constitutes a ‘good life’ or a ‘good society’ and correspondingly different

concepts of welfare and quality of life have been developed. Various
approaches and operationalisations are to be distinguished, each of which
reveals a different notion of welfare and thus highlights different components
and dimensions. Moreover, the kind of indicators chosen for empirical
measurement also largely depends on the underlying conceptualisation. In
particular, the distinction between so-called ‘objective’ and ‘subjective’ social
indicators goes closely together with the respective conceptual frame of
reference. While objective social indicators are statistics which represent social
facts independent of personal evaluations, subjective social indicators are
measures of individual perceptions and evaluations of social conditions (Noll,
2000b).

3.1. Notions of Welfare and Approaches of Quality of Life Measurement

Among the various efforts to operationalise welfare in general and the

quality of life concept in particular, two polar approaches are to be
distinguished, which define the two extreme positions on a broad continuum of
concepts currently available (Noll/Zapf, 1994): the Scandinavian level of living
approach (Erikson, 1993; Uusitalo, 1994) and the American quality of life
approach (Campbell/Converse/Rodgers, 1976). As two distinctive
conceptualisations and operationalisations of welfare and quality of life,6 the
Scandinavian approach focuses almost exclusively on resources and objective
living conditions. The American approach emphasises the subjective well-
being of individuals as a final outcome of conditions and processes.
The level of living approach as it has been developed by Scandinavian
welfare researchers, following the tradition set by Jan Drewnowski and Rich-
ard Titmus, bases welfare measurement exclusively on objective indicators.
Within this tradition, welfare is understood as the “individual’s command
over, under given determinants mobilisable resources, with whose help
he/she can control and consciously direct his/her living conditions" (Erikson,
1974: 275; Erikson, 1993: 72 ff.). This notion of welfare departs from the per-
ception of the individual citizen “as an active, creative being, and the auto-
nomous definer of his own end. The resources are mere means to the latter"
(Thålin, 1990: 166). Resources are defined in terms of money, property,
knowledge, psychic and physical energy, social relations, security and so on
(Erikson/Uusitalo, 1987: 189). The focus is on the objective living condi-
tions, life chances and their determinants: “We ... try to assess the individ-
ual’s level of living in a way which makes it as little influenced as possible
by the individual's evaluation of his own situation" (Erikson, 1993: 77).

6
“… the word ‘welfare’ in all the Scandinavian languages also stands for well-being,
and it relates to both level of living and quality of life” (Allardt, 1993: 88).

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 Heinz-Herbert Noll

A more recent and to some respect similar concept of welfare and quality of
life is that of ‘capabilities’, which has been developed by Amartya Sen, the
Nobel laureate in economics. This approach is “based on a view of living as a
combination of various ‘doings and beings’, with quality of life to be assessed
in terms of the capability to achieve valuable functionings” (Sen, 1993: 31).
Functionings “represent parts of the state of a person – in particular the various
things that he or she manages to do or be in leading a life.... Some functionings
are very elementary, such as being adequately nourished, being in good health,
etc. ... others may be more complex, but still widely valued, such as achieving
self-respect or being socially integrated” (Sen, 1993: 31). This notion of
welfare and quality of life has been elaborated within the ‘Human
Development Approach’, the conceptual framework of the series of ‘Human
Development Reports’ published by the United Nations Development Program.
The American quality of life research bases welfare measurement primarily
on subjective indicators. In the tradition of utilitarian philosophy, ‘mental
health research’ and strongly influenced by social psychologists like W. I.
Thomas known by his dictum that “if men define situations as real, they are
real in their consequences” (Thomas 1928: 571-572), this approach ultimately
defines welfare as subjective well-being. The representatives of this approach
underline that welfare and quality of life are supposed to be subjectively
perceived and experienced by the individual. Seen from this point of view, the
subjective well-being of the individual citizen is considered to be the ultimate
goal of societal development and the yardstick to be used for measuring the
quality of life: “The quality of life must be in the eye of the beholder”
(Campbell, 1972: 442).7 Accordingly, the “common man himself” is
considered to be the best expert to evaluate his quality of life in terms of
subjective well-being. The most important indicators of subjective well-being
used actually are measures of satisfaction and happiness.
During the last three decades, subjective human well-being has been the
subject of numerous studies developing theoretical models and empirical
measures, describing and comparing levels and changes of well-being for
various populations and suggesting explanations for the findings.8 The
empirical correlates and explanatory factors of life satisfaction as an overall
indicator of general subjective well-being are at the centre of a research field,
which during recent years has attracted much interest and attention all around
the world.9

7
For a conceptualisation of quality of life in terms of subjective well-being see also
Argyle (1996).
8
Reviews of the vast literature and overviews over this field of research are provided
for example by Diener (1984), Diener et al. (1999), Heady/Weary (1992) and
Veenhoven (1996).
9
Many findings of this kind of research have been published in the international
journal Social Indicators Research (edited by Alex Michalos). The Journal of
Happiness Studies (edited by Ruut Veenhoven) is another more recent periodical,
devoted to subjective well-being. Many researchers working in the field of subjective
well-being are organized within The International Society for Quality-of-Life Studies
157
 Heinz-Herbert Noll

3.2. Objective and Subjective Indicators

The use of objective indicators starts from the assumption that living
conditions can be judged to be favourable or unfavourable by comparing real
conditions with normative criteria like values, goals or objectives. An
important precondition, however, is that there is a societal or even political
consensus about three key issues: first, about the dimensions that are relevant
for welfare considerations; second, about good and bad conditions; third, about
the direction in which society should move. This may sometimes be the case,
but it is certainly not always ensured. Probably there is a consensus that we
would consider a reduction of unemployment or crime and an increase in the
average income or educational level as improvement and progress. We could
perhaps be less sure, when it comes to indicators like the age of retirement; and
it might indeed be debatable whether a reduction of income inequality should
in general be regarded as social progress, given the fact that there may be a
trade-off between equity and efficiency or fairness and economic growth
(McMurrer/Sawhill, 1998: 25).
In contrast to that, using subjective social indicators is based on the premise
that welfare, in the final instance, must be perceived by individual citizens and
can be judged best by them. This position, too, is not undisputed and has
caused a deep controversy about the principles of welfare measurement.
Particularly Scandinavian welfare researchers have criticized this subjective
quality of life approach and the use of subjective indicators. One of their
concerns “with an approach based on people’s own assessment of their degree
of satisfaction is that it is partly determined by their level of aspiration”
(Erikson, 1993: 77).10 Looking at how satisfied people are, from this point of
view is being criticized as “measuring how well they are adapted to their
present conditions” (Erikson 1993: 77). According to R. Erikson - one of the
most eminent proponents of Scandinavian welfare research – “people’s
opinions and preferences should go into the democratic political process
through their activities as citizens, but not through survey questions and
opinion polls” (1993: 78). Contrary to this position, others have underlined that
policy makers need to use subjective indicators along with objective indicators:
.“..subjective indicators are indispensable in social policy, both for assessing
policy success and for selecting policy goals” (Veenhoven, 2000: 6).

are organized within The International Society for Quality-of-Life Studies

(ISQOLS), which is an association promoting and encouraging research in the field
of quality of life studies in general with a focus on subjective well-being.
10
For a recent scepticism about ‘subjective indicators’ see Cobb (2000: 5f): “Treating
self-reported measures as adequate representations of QOL presupposes that people
are conscious of and able to articulate nuances of feelings, that transitory feelings
represent durable conditions, that feelings are equivalent to values, that happiness or
other reported feelings fully account for valued conditions, and that feelings can be
quantified on an absolute scale. In addition, there is a pronounced difference between
what people say they want and what they actually do, which causes some researchers
to ignore survey-based indicators altogether..“ For a general discussion of the
‘Qualms About Subjective Indicators’ see Veenhoven (2000).
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 Heinz-Herbert Noll

In addition to the general doubts concerning the use of subjective indicators,

questions have been raised concerning the validity and reliability of this kind of
information. However, there is not much reason to believe that subjective
indicators are less valid and reliable than other survey data, which always are
affected by measurement errors: “Subjective indicators measure, what they
ought to measure and they react sensitive to societal developments”
(Habich/Zapf, 1994: 30).
Today, the overall consensus of opinion is to base welfare measurement on
both objective and subjective indicators, given the fact “that similar living
conditions are evaluated quite differently, that people in bad conditions
frequently are satisfied and privileged persons may be very dissatisfied” (Zapf,
1984). Such a broader notion of welfare and quality of life was for example
taken as the basis of Erik Allardt’s Comparative Scandinavian Welfare Study
as early as in the beginning of the 1970s. This approach distinguishes between
three classes of basic needs of human beings - having, loving and being
(Allardt, 1993).11 For each category, objective as well as subjective dimensions
of need satisfaction are considered. Within the predominant approach of
German welfare research, individual welfare or quality of life is defined as
“good living conditions which gо together with positive subjective well-being”
(Zapf, 1984). Within this frame of reference, the co-variations between
objective and subjective indicators are of particular interest, since subjective
well-being is supposed to be only partially determined by external conditions.
More recently, Lane (1996) defined quality of life not only as a state, but
also as a process which includes subjective and objective elements. In his
approach, he particularly emphasizes the active role of personal experience and
the capacity of individuals – in his terms the ‘quality of persons’ - as a
constitutive element of life quality: “Quality of life is properly defined by the
relation between two subjective or person-based elements and a set of objective
circumstances. The subjective elements of a high quality of life comprise: (1) a
sense of well-being and (2) personal development, learning growth.... The
objective element is conceived as quality of conditions representing
opportunities for exploitation by the person living a life” (Lane, 1996: 259).

3.3. Utility Versus Agency

There is a multitude of current conceptualisations of welfare and quality of life

following the one or the other tradition. The predominant use of objective or
subjective indicators is of course only one distinctive feature. According to
Clifford W. Cobb (2000), the various notions might be assigned to ‘utilitarian’
as opposed to ‘capabilities or human development’ approaches. Similarly,
Esping-Andersen distinguishes approaches based on needs as opposed

11
The ‘loving’ category would - by the way - cover many of the dimensions which in
our more current terminology are referred to by the concept of social cohesion.
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 Heinz-Herbert Noll

to resources (2000). According to the dominating utilitarian or needs-based

approaches, “quality of life involves the satisfaction of the desires of
individuals, and the good society is defined as one that provides the maximum
satisfaction or positive experiences for its citizens” (Cobb, 2000: 9).
Conceptualisations following a resources approach or capabilities / human
development theory on the other hand emphasize ‘human action’ or ‘agency’.
From this point of view “a society that enables its citizens to aspire to
greatness, to develop virtues and loyalties, to become skilled and artistic, and
to attain wisdom is far better than a society that merely provides the means to
satisfy desires” (Cobb, 2000: 10). According to Cobb (2000:13), utilitarian
approaches are in Erik Allardt’s terms, “limited to ‘having,’ whereas the
human development idea includes ‘having,’ but also encompasses ‘doing’ and
‘being’”.

3.4. Individual Versus Societal Quality of Life

A common feature of most of the current quality of life approaches is the

more or less implicit or explicit conceptualisation of quality of life as
concerning individual characteristics and life circumstances. Although they
have been part of the early versions of the quality of life concept, dimensions
of welfare related to societal characteristics and qualities such as equality,
equity, freedom, or solidarity – which affect the welfare situation of individuals
directly or indirectly - have been rather neglected, at least as far as empirical
measurement and research are concerned. In contrast to this, some of the more
recent welfare concepts put the focus explicitly on aspects concerning the
quality of societies, the distribution of welfare and social relations within
societies (Noll, 2000a).
Social cohesion and sustainability are two major examples of notions of the
good society stressing relational and societal rather than individual
characteristics. In recent years the concept of social cohesion received great
attention not only within academic debates, but also within policy making
processes at national and supranational levels. The increasing popularity of the
concept is most likely due to various aspects of economic and social change,
which are currently considered to threaten the social cohesion of societies such
as rising income inequality, poverty, unemployment, and crime. As a detailed
review of the literature reveals (Berger-Schmitt/Noll, 2000; Berger-Schmitt,
2000), the concept of social cohesion incorporates mainly two dimensions of
societal development, which may be related to each other but should be
distinguished analytically. The first dimension concerns the reduction of
disparities, inequalities, fragmentations and cleavages, which have also been
denoted as ‘fault lines’ of societies. The concept of social exclusion is covered
by this notion too. The second dimension embraces the forces strengthening
social relations, ties and commitments to and within a community. This
dimension is also stressed by the concepts of social inclusion and social capital.
Although both of these dimensions emphasised within the social cohesion
discourse are supposed to represent major components of indi-

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vidual and societal well-being, they have been rather neglected within
mainstream quality of life research.
During the 1990s, the concept of sustainability has become a popular and
most important model of societal development and a ‘better society’. From a
general point of view, the concept of sustainability can be seen as a new answer
to the traditional concern with a balanced and harmonious society and societal
development (Noll, 2000a). The concept became popular in 1987 as the central
message of the so-called Brundtland-Report Our Common Future of the World
Commission on Environment and Development, where it was defined as
“development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the
ability of future generations to meet their own needs” (World Commission on
Environment and Development, 1987: 43). Usually three dimensions of
sustainable development are being distinguished: the environmental, the social
and the economic dimension; which are supposed to be linked to each other.
Thus, sustainability has been defined “as a continuous striving for the
harmonious co-evolution of environmental, economic and socio-cultural goals”
(Mega/Pedersen, 1998: 2). Among the various attempts to conceptualise and to
operationalise sustainable development;12 the World Bank’s Multiple Capital
Model (World Bank, 1997) is one of the best known and popular approaches.
Within this approach, sustainable development is conceptualised with
reference to national wealth and denotes the maintenance or enhancement of
wealth for future generations. The World Bank approach distinguishes between
four components of wealth: natural capital, produced/man-made capital, human
capital and social capital. From this perspective, the goal of passing on to the
next generation at least as much natural, economic, human and social capital as
the current generation has at its disposal is at the centre of the idea of a
sustainable development. While the view of traditional quality of life research
is mainly focused on the well-being of present generations, sustainability
considerations put the emphasis on intergenerational equity and thus are being
essential for ensuring the quality of life of future generations. In this sense,
“sustainable development has become a widely accepted term to describe the
goal of achieving a high, equitable and sustainable quality of life” (Eckersley,
1998: 6).

4. Applications and Uses of Social Indicators and Quality of Life Research

The innovative ideas developed within the social indicators movement and
several decades of quality of life research have been documented in all kinds
6

12
An overview can be found in OECD, 1998; Moldan/Billharz/Matravers, 1997;
Hardi/Barg/Hodge, 1997. See also U.N. Commission on Sustainable Development
1996.

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 Heinz-Herbert Noll

of academic publications, including numerous book volumes, handbooks,

articles as well as specialised journals and newsletters, like Social Indicators
Research, the Journal of Happiness Studies, INDICATORS, Social Indicators
Network News and the German Informationsdienst Soziale Indikatoren.
Moreover, these ideas and findings have also found their way into regular
university curricula and into the policy making at various levels -
supranational, national, regional and local. Academics and practitioners
working in these fields have organised themselves in professional working
groups, associations and societies like the working group ‘Social Indicators and
Social Reporting’ within the International Sociological Association or the
‘International Society for Quality of Life Studies’.
The results of social indicators and quality of life research in terms of
concepts, methodologies, monitoring tools, indicator selections and the like are
being used by many observatories around the globe for continuous social
measurement and monitoring. However, few systems of social indicators have
been developed so far (Berger-Schmitt/Jankowitsch, 1999). Among them are
the Swedish survey based ULF system13 and the German System of Social
Indicators, which comes also as an electronic information system (DISI 2.0).14
Both of these tools for systematic social monitoring have originally been
developed in the seventies.
A recent example of a social indicator system is the ‘European System of
Social Indicators’, which has been developed as part of the “EuReporting-
Project,“ funded by the European Commission from 1998 to 2001.15 This
system is considered to be an instrument to continuously monitor the ‘social
situation’ and societal changes in Europe (Noll, 2002b). The indicator system
covers 14 life domains altogether. Within each life domain, the dimensions of
measurement and indicators address different aspects of individual quality of
life, as well as dimensions of social cohesion and sustainability as two mayor
components of the ‘quality of society’ (Berger-Schmitt/Noll, 2000). Moreover,
also basic dimensions of the social structure as well as attitudes and value
orientations are covered. The indicator system not yet finalized shall include 20
European countries, but also the U.S. and Japan as two important reference
societies. As part of this research an electronic ‘European Social Indicators
Information System’ is under development, which will provide an innovative
and easy to use tool to query, retrieve and display the data either in tabular or
graphic formats at the PC screen and to transfer this information into other
applications.
7

13
For detailed information see (all weblinks checked by September 2002):
http://www.scb.se/eng/befovalfard/levnadsforhallanden/centrala_indikatorer/ulf/ulf.asp
14
For detailed information see:
http://www.gesis.org/en/social_monitoring/social_indicators/index.htm
15
Detailed information on this indicator system is available at:
http://www.gesis.org/en/social_monitoring/social_indicators/EU_Reporting/eusi.htm

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4.1. Social Reporting: A Major Application

Regular social monitoring and reporting is by far the most important and most
successful application of social indicators and quality of life research. Social
reporting - according to an early definition by Wolfgang Zapf - aims at
providing “information on social structures and processes and on preconditions
and consequences of social policy, regularly, in time, systematically, and
autonomously” (Zapf, 1977a: 11). In a less ambitious way, one may define
social reporting simply as a more or less institutionalised collection and
presentation of data, which enable the evaluation of living conditions and well-
being of the population and their changes over time. Thus, social reporting
generates quantitative information and empirically based knowledge to be used
for the purposes of self-reflection of a single society or a group of societies like
the European Union. As a specific mode of production, dissemination, and
presentation of socially relevant knowledge, social reporting today is well
established within the information systems of many nation states and within
international and supranational organisations like the OECD, the European
Union and the United Nations.
In Europe there are now only very few countries left, which do not conduct
any sort of comprehensive and regular social reporting at the national level
(Figure 1). Some of the most well known reports, e.g. the British Social
Trends, the Dutch Social and Cultural Report, and the French Donnés Sociales
- are already been published for approximately 30 years. On the other hand, in
some countries like Portugal, Switzerland or the Czech Republic,
comprehensive social reports have been published only recently.
Interestingly enough, the United States as the society where the social
indicators movement evolved and some of the first social reporting activities
took place, has failed so far in establishing a regular and continuously
published national social report. Although Towards a Social Report prototype
of an American social report had been developed by Mancur Olson on behalf
of the Department of Health, Education and Welfare and was published as
early as 1969, the American President did not take up the idea of establishing a
regular annual report as it was requested as part of the so-called ‘Mondale
Initiative’ (Booth, 1992). Also, the series of reports published under the title
Social Indicators has been discontinued after the latest issue in 1981. Today
there are several non-official publications serving the demand for social
reporting in the U.S. as for example the report Social Health of the Nation
(Miringoff/Miringoff, 1999) or Calvert-Henderson Quality of Life Indicators
(Henderson/Lickerman/Flyn, 2000).16
8

16
In a recent article the Fordham Institute for Innovation in Social Policy has
announced to regularly publish an annual social report for the U.S. in the future
(Miringoff et al. 2001/2002).

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Table 1: National social reports for European countries

Country/Institution Title First Latest Period

EditionEdition

Austria Sozialstatistische Daten 1977 1990 4/5 years

Statistisches Zentralamt
Czech Republic Ten years of rebuilding capitalism1999 1999 ?
Institute of Sociology Czech society after 1989
(J. Vecernik/P. Mateju (eds.)
Denmark Levelikår I Danmark 1976 1997 -4 years
Danmarks Statistics /
Socialforskningsinstituttet
Germany Datenreport 1983 2002 2 years
Statistisches Bundesamt
with WZB and ZUMA
France Données Sociales 1973 1999 3 years
Institut Nationale de la Sta-
tistique et des Economique
Great Britain Social Trends 1970 2001 1 year
Central Statistical Office
Hungary Social Report 1990 2000 2 years
Tarki EnglishEnglish
1992 1998
Italy Sintesi della Vita Sociale Italiana 1990 1990
Instituto Nationale di Statistica
La situatione del paese 1992 2000 1 year
CENSIS Rapporto sulla situazione sociale
del paese 1973 2001 1 year
Luxembourg Recueil D’Etudes Sociales 1997 ?
CEPS/Instead
Netherlands Social and Cultural Report 1974 2000 2 years
Social and Cultural Planning Office English
1998
Norway Sosialt Utsyn 1974 2000 2 years
Statistics Norway English Edition 2000
Norges Offentlige Utredniger Levekå i Norge 1993 1993 ?
Portugal Portugal Social 1985-1990 1992 1992 ?
Instituto Nacional de Estatistica
Instituto de Ciencias Sociais,Situacao Social em Portugal, 1960/1992
1996 ?
Universidade Lisboa
Spain Indicadores Sociales 1991 1999 ?
Instituto Nacional de EstadisticaPanoramica Social 1974 1994 ?
Sweden Perspectiv på Välfärden 1987Erratically
Statistics Sweden Välfärd och Ojämlikhet 1997 ?
Switzerland Sozialbericht 2000 2000 2000 ?
Ch. Suter (ed.)

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Canada has become a centre of diverse social monitoring and reporting

activities in recent years, although a regularly published comprehensive social
report does not yet exist at the national level.17 However, there are not only
reporting activities at the local and provincial levels, such as the Portrait Social
du Quebec (Institut de la Statistique Quebec, 2001), but also recent initiatives
to promote social reporting and quality of life measurements and research by
organisations like the Canadian Policy Research Networks and the Canadian
Council on Social Development, leaving out diverse academic activities.18
But even outside Europe and North America social reporting is well
established by now. In recent years Australia saw several new initiatives in
social reporting. In 1994 the Australian Bureau of Statistics published
Australian Social Trends as the first edition of an annual series, which aims to
monitor changes in Australian social conditions over time. In 2001 the
Australian Bureau of Statistics issued a publication on Measuring Wellbeing
(Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2001), which is supposed to provide a
framework for Australian social statistics in each area of social concern. Also
New Zealand has released a first national social report in 2001 (Ministry of
Social Policy New Zealand, 2001). Starting in the early nineties a Social
Panorama of Latin America has already been published several times by the
United Nations Economic Commission. Indicator South Africa: The Barometer
of Social Trends is a quarterly publication by the Center for Social and
Developmental Studies of the University of Natal, monitoring the far reaching
transformations of the South African society. There are also some interesting
social reporting activities in Japan, mainly by the Economic Planning Agency
of the Japanese government. Even in China some projects focusing on quality
of life monitoring have been established recently. Of course, these are only
some examples, which by no means are supposed to form a complete list of
such reporting efforts.
In addition to social reports presenting a comprehensive view of living
conditions and quality of life in a society, there are also domain or group spe-
cific reports, which are being published in many countries regularly. Such re-
porting activities include reports on family life, the health situation, education
or poverty and on social groups like the elderly, young people, women and
children. If one regards the successful spread of national social reporting as a
process of diffusion of an innovation within the system of societal informa-
tion, certain regularities may be detected. Looking at Europe, it seems that
the establishment of national social reporting obviously was promoted best
under the preconditions of an articulated welfare-state policy, an interven-
tionist orientation of government, innovative statistical agencies, and geo-
9

17
Statistics Canada publishes the quarterly Canadian Social Trends, which reports on
diverse topics of the social conditions in Canada, but not a comprehensive social
report.
18
The Canadian Policy Research Networks (2002) just recently has published its first
‘Citizens’ Report Card’ on ‘Quality of Life in Canada’.

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 Heinz-Herbert Noll

graphical centrality (Rothenbacher, 1993; Habich/Noll, 1994). In addition, the

European integration and processes of economic integration and political
cooperation in other parts of the world have had a significant impact on the
further development of social reporting. As we can notice by looking at the
publication of social reports in Hungary, the Czech Republic and other former
socialist countries, it seems that with political liberalisation and the transition
to market economies, the development of social reporting has gained additional
momentum in those countries as well.
Supranational organizations took up social reporting early and today they
still continue to be among the most important actors in this field. The OECD
Programme for Work on Social Indicators (OECD, 1982) and the System of
Social and Demographic Statistics of the United Nations (1975) have heavily
influenced modern social reporting. The OECD, however, failed to convert its
ambitious concepts into a regular reporting system. The early OECD
programme on social indicators was cancelled in the mid-1980s after the first
and final publication of the report Living Conditions in OECD Countries.
However, the OECD has again taken up its social indicator activities in the
meanwhile and recently has published a new report Society at a Glance –
OECD Social Indicators (OECD, 2001a). Related reporting activities by the
OECD concern the measurement and monitoring of human and social capital
(OECD, 2001b) as well as sustainable development (OECD, 2001c).
At present, the diverse activities of the United Nations and its special
organisations are concentrated on global observations of social or human
development. In addition to the World Bank Reports, the Human Development
Reports of the United Nations Development Program are of particular interest
(UNDP, 2001). Especially the effort to use the Human Development Index as a
summary measure of societal development, offering an integrated view across
different dimensions of the level of living, has attracted attention and has
triggered a new academic debate on the general possibilities, but also the
advantages and shortcomings of composite measures of quality of life and
social development (Hagerty et al., 2001; Noll, 2002a).
In contrast to the United Nations and the OECD, the European Community
has taken up social reporting at least in the beginning in a rather pragmatic
manner. The series Social Indicators for the European Community published
by Eurostat in three editions from 1977 to 1984 was replaced in 1991 by the
annual report Social Portrait of Europe. Since 1998 Eurostat publishes a
pocketbook on Living Conditions in Europe, presenting a selection of ‘key
indicators’. Even closer to the ideal of a social report comes the Social
Situation Report, an annual collaborative report by Eurostat and the European
Commission, published for the first time in the year 2000. This report attempts
to provide “a holistic view of population and social conditions as a background
to social policy development and establishes links with community policies in
the social field such as the European Employment Strategy”
(Eurostat/European Commission, 2000:5). There is clear evidence that
the authorities of the European Union are giving new priority to social

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indicators and social reporting not least as a consequence of the stronger

emphasis that is placed on the social dimension as part of the processes of
European integration. The improvement of living conditions and the quality of
life in its member states is among the main concerns and policy goals of the
European Union, as has been stated for example in the Maastricht Treaty.19
Accordingly, the availability of appropriate knowledge and systematic
information on individual and societal well-being within and across European
societies is of crucial importance to enhance the European integration and
cohesion between member states and thus to create the Social Europe of the
21st century.
The available reports demonstrate that social reporting is characterised by a
variety of conceptual approaches, reporting schemes, actors, and institutional
solutions. Obviously, there is not just one generally agreed-upon model, but a
variety of more or less successful and convincing variants. The agents of social
reporting are for the most part statistical offices, but also include special
planning agencies, ministries, associations (e.g. trade unions), and professional
institutions. The available reports thus differ in analytical depth, sophistication
of methods, and style of presentation.

4.2. Uses of Social Indicators and Social Reporting: Enlightenment and

Information for Policy Making

As seen in retrospective, the success of social indicators research and social

reporting is more striking in the field of general enlightenment than in the
production of technical expert knowledge or the provision of special planning
intelligence for policy makers. The ideas of using social indicators and social
reporting to contribute to a rationalisation of the political process, to set goals
and priorities, to evaluate political programmes, and to develop early warning
systems have at least partially proven to be too ambitious. According to a
recent suggestion by Brown and Corbett, five basic policy-relevant uses of
social indicators may be distinguished, which they consider as a “hierarchical
typology of uses which incur progressively exacting demands: description,
monitoring, setting goals, outcomes-based accountability and evaluation”
(Brown/Corbett, 1997: iii). While social indicators and social reports have
quite successfully been used as description and monitoring tools, their
application and use in the latter fields is still insufficient if not problematic.20
In the early stages of social indicators and quality of life research, the
complexity of the policy making processes has been underestimated and the
relevance of empirical information on the changes of societies for political
10

19
For an analysis of policy goals at the European level see Berger-Schmitt/Noll (2000:
28ff.).
20
One may also argue that more sophisticated research designs including the use of
microdata analysis are requested when it comes to the evaluation of the impact and
efficiency of political measures and programs.

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 Heinz-Herbert Noll

action has been judged too optimistically. The believe of some advocates of
social indicators research and social reporting that “‘what gets measured gets
done’ ... makes a nice slogan, but is not entirely true” (Cobb/Rixford, 1998:
23). In her analysis of the use of knowledge in public policy, Judith Innes came
to the following conclusion: “The failure was more due to an overly simplistic
view of how and under what conditions knowledge influences policy, than to,
as some observers suggested, a fundamental conflict between the worlds of
knowledge and public action” (Innes 1990, p. 430). But obviously, an
instrumental or technocratic model which proposes a direct demand on the part
of politics for scientific information in order to solve policy problems does not
provide us with an appropriate view of this link. As it seems, a model of
enlightenment according to which social science is rather indirectly connected
with politics, is much more realistic. In this sense it is only consequential that
social indicators research and social reporting today is assigned a less
ambitious and less direct function as a provider of information. According to
Vogel (1990: 441) “social reporting belongs to the democratic infrastructure
and has a special political function. To put it simply, social reporting places
welfare issues on the political agenda. It supplies material to the public debate,
influencing the media and, indirectly, the administration.” If we are going to
distinguish three ways of affecting public policy - problem definition, policy
choice and programme monitoring (MacRae, 1985) - the role of social
reporting so far obviously focuses on that of ‘problem definition’, e.g. on the
identification of new problems or challenging and changing existing definitions
of problems.21

5. Recent Trends in Social Indicators and Quality of Life Research

During the past three decades the fields of social indicators and quality of
life research have undergone various cycles of growing and declining attention
and activity levels. Obviously, the interest in these fields and respective
research and reporting activities have increased considerably during the
nineties and at the turn of the century. According to Esping-Andersen (2000:
1), this was partially due to “dissatisfaction with the kind of indicator and
monitoring approach that ensued under the aegis of the United Nations, the ...
OECD and the World Bank, and in part by the widespread recognition that the
terrain of social welfare has changed dramatically in recent decades.”
11

21
This perception of the role of social reporting is confirmed by Sten Johansson, a
founder of the Scandinavian social indicators movement and level of living research:
“Social reporting would serve the democratic process best if it answers‚ how it is and
leaves the answers on ‘how it ought to be’ and ‘what should be done‘ to come about
through discussions among citizens“ (Johansson, 2001: 1).

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Additional reasons for the renewed interest may be found in the new objectives
of societal development like sustainability and social cohesion and the need for
respective monitoring tools, the processes of globalisation and
internationalisation and the popularity of benchmarking at different levels, new
models of governance and a trend towards evidence-based policy making
practices, to mention just a few.
Recent developments reflect and to some degree overcome critical views of
‘traditional’ social indicators research as they have been expressed for example
by Esping-Andersen (2000) or Cobb/Rixford (1998) and Cobb (2000). Esping-
Andersen has criticized the “Keynesian-inspired ideas of welfare monitoring
that were developed in the 1960s and 1970s” (Esping-Andersen, 2000: 1) as
being atheoretical and purely descriptive, overly static and unhistorical and
based mainly on discrete aggregate measures designed to follow trends. This
view of ‘traditional’ social indicators research may certainly be challenged and
trend monitoring based on aggregated measures still seems to play an important
role among other monitoring functions. On the other hand, more recent
approaches frequently use micro-data bases, including longitudinal data as for
example provided by household panel and life history studies, which to some
extend is simply due to the improved availability and accessibility of this kind
of data. Such a development also facilitates a progress from description to
analysis as suggested by Cobb/Rixford (1998: 2): “in order to move from
indicators to action, projects must examine the causes behind the symptoms, a
process that could lead the indicators movement in a new direction.”
A detailed and comprehensive presentation of recent developments in social
indicators and quality of life research certainly would exceed the scope of this
article. The following pages contain just a sketch of some trends the author
considers to be the most significant.

5.1. Sophistication of Methods and Improved Databases

As far as methodological issues are concerned, the application of more so-

phisticated methods of data analysis and presentation is among the most ob-
vious developments. Particularly the worldwide web has provided new tech-
niques and opened new perspectives for the presentation and dissemination of
information on living conditions and quality of life. In addition, the avail-
ability of appropriate databases has greatly improved compared to the early
stages of social indicators and quality of life research. In many countries spe-
cific quality of life or social studies are conducted regularly now, serving a
“need for regular, integrated surveys and simultaneous measurement of social
indicators, as well as extended data on the quality of life” (Vogel, 1997:
112f). Many of these surveys are being regularly repeated, thus forming da-
tabases to be used for continuous monitoring and analysis across time. Par-
ticularly, the increasing availability of longitudinal data provided by house-

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hold panel studies has opened new perspectives for the description and
explanation of life quality and social change. Longitudinal information which
goes beyond time series of aggregate data offers much better opportunities, not
only for developing longitudinal indicators such as inflow-, outflow- and
duration-indicators, but also for causal and dynamic analysis.

5.2. Community Indicators Movement and Quality of City Life

In recent years, social indicators and quality of life research has increasingly
been applied at community and city levels, not considering that the topics of
urban indicators and quality of life have also received growing attention in
academic research.22 In particular, during the nineties numerous urban or
community indicator initiatives emerged around the globe. Some observers
referred to this development as the ‘community indicators movement’, which
includes academic as well as policy oriented components. At the turn of the
century only in the United States “over 200 communities ... developed sets of
indicators that illuminate long-term trends of economic, environmental, and
social well-being” (Redefining Progress website).23 While some of these
projects explicitly refer to quality of life as their frame of reference, others start
from concepts like sustainability or ‘healthy communities’. For example, a
project of the U.S. National League of Cities on ‘Cities in Transition’ aims at
the construction of an index of municipal livability and well-being for cit-
ies. The Winnipeg Quality of Life Indicators project establishes a measure-
ment system for quality of life. Other examples are the project on Quality of
Life in Big Cities of New Zealand, which began in 1999 with the objective to
establish indicators of social well-being, including also economic andenvi-
ronmental indicators designed to monitor quality of life as a whole,24 and at a
larger scale the Urban Indicators Program by the United Nations’ Centre for
Human Settlements (Habitat). It is developing indicators to provide a com-
prehensive picture of cities and measure progress towards achieving urban
objectives.25 In many cases, urban indicators and quality of life projects are
combined with specific data collection programmes such as quality of life or
citizen surveys. A well known example is the New York City Social Indica-
tors Survey (SIS), designed to monitor changes in the well-being of New
Yorkers and identifying populations in need of additional programmes or
services.26 In Germany, there are now almost twenty larger cities conducting
12

22
See for example the proceedings of a recent conference on urban quality of life
(Yuan/Yuen/Low, 1999)
23
See http://www.rprogress.org/projects/indicators/. A compendium of such initiatives
in the U.S., Canada and other regions of the world is available at:
http://iisd1.iisd.ca/measure/compindex.asp.
24
See http://www.bigcities.govt.nz/index.htm
25
See http://www.unhabitat.org/guo/gui/
26
See http://www.columbia.edu/cu/ssw/projects/surcent/.

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citizen surveys on a regular basis, which are more or less focused on quality of
life issues. The results of these diverse community indicators and quality of life
projects are primarily used for social reporting activities at the community and
municipal level, but are also reflected in academic debates, at conferences and
in scientific publications.

5.3. Quality of Life of Specific Population Groups

Quality of life studies as well as social reporting activities have been

addressing and focussing on specific population groups for quite a long time.
Among those groups are for example women, immigrants, young or
handicapped people. More recently, two target groups – children on the one
hand and the elderly on the other – have attracted particular interest in terms of
research and reporting activities.
The specific life situation of children has been largely ignored in the
early stages of social indicators and quality of life research, but it is now at
the centre of many research and reporting activities.27 Since the information
on living conditions and quality of life of children is sometimes difficult to
obtain from general population surveys, particular child-surveys have been
developed and conducted in some countries in recent years. From the many
‘child reports’ and indicator initiatives at various levels, only few may be
mentioned here: The Progress of Canada’s Children 2001 is a national report
and the fifth in a series published by the Canadian Council on Social Devel-
opment monitoring the well-being of children, youth, and families. The long-
term goal of this report is to measure changes in children's well-being from
year to year. The annual reports focus particular attention on varying topics
such as the ‘school-aged children’ in the 2001 report for example. In the
United States several child reporting initiatives have been launched during
the last decade: Trends in the Well-Being of America's Children and Youth
2001 is the sixth edition of an annual report from the Department of Health
and Human Services. The report is based on more than 80 indicators of well-
being: “It is intended to provide the policy community, the media, and all in-
terested citizens with an accessible overview of data describing the condition
of children in the United States.”28 Other respective U.S. reporting activities
include America's Children: Key National Indicators of Well-Being, an an-
nual report from the Forum on Child and Family Statistics and the Kids
Count initiative by the Annie E. Casey Foundation. It is “a state-by-state ef-
fort to track the status of children in the U.S. By providing policymakers and
citizens with benchmarks of child well-being.”29 The State of the World's
13

27
For comprehensive reviews of child indicator and reporting initiatives see in
particular Ben-Arieh et al. (2001), Land (2000b) for the U.S., and Nauck (1997) for
Germany.
28
Quoted from the introduction of the 2001 edition. See
http://aspe.hhs.gov/hsp/01trends/intro.htm
29
See http://www.aecf.org/kidscount/

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Children 2000 by UNICEF is a report on the well-being of children at the

global level. There are also plenty of child reports on the regional and local
level.
The rapidly growing research and reporting activities concerning living
conditions and quality of life of the elderly might be stimulated by the current
trends of demographic change towards aging societies. Due to declining birth
rates and increasing life expectancy the share of the elderly within the
populations of many societies have been growing considerably in recent
decades and will continue in the years to come. Placing particular emphasis on
the elderly reflects the fact that more and more people spend longer time in this
period of the life cycle. Thus, the quality of additional years of life of this
growing population moves to the centre of interest. A recent example of
respective reporting for the U.S. is the report Older Americans 2000: Key
Indicators of Well-Being, published by the Federal Interagency Forum on
Aging Related Statistics. It is considered the first edition of a future series. In
Germany the 4th report on the elderly (Altenbericht) has been published in
2002, which has been prepared by an expert commission on behalf of the
Federal Ministry for the Family, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth. Also,
Statistics Sweden recently has published a comprehensive special report on the
living conditions of the elderly (Vogel et al., 2000). In close relation to this
kind of reporting and research initiatives on living conditions and quality of life
of the elderly also particular ‘old-aged-surveys’ have been conducted in several
countries, such as Sweden and Germany in recent years. It is most likely that
the concern with the living conditions and quality of life of the elderly will
further grow in the years to come.

5.4. Sustainability and Social Cohesion Indicators

With the increasing popularity of the concepts of sustainable development

and social cohesion, numerous projects have been launched in order to allow
measurement of these concepts and focusing on the development of
sustainability and social cohesion indicators.30 Also the conceptual debates and
diverse efforts of developing indicators to measure social exclusion and
inclusion are closely related to these activities (Atkinson et al., 2002). Since
there are considerable overlaps between the measurement efforts related to
these two concepts and quality of life and social indicators research, many of
these initiatives referred to and profited from the available knowledge and
experience in the latter fields. On the other hand, the initiatives of developing
measurement tools and indicators concerning sustainability and social cohesion
have also challenged conventional views, created new ideas and thus
14

30
For a list of selected sources of sustainable development indicators see
http://iisd1.iisd.ca/ic/info/ss9504.htm; a rather comprehensive report on Social
Cohesion in Canada: Possible Indicators by the Canadian Council on Social
Development is available at http://www.ccsd.ca/pubs/2001/si/sra-543.pdf; see also
Berger-Schmitt (2000)

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have given a new impetus to quality of life and social indicators research. The
popularity of these concepts and the felt need to develop appropriate
measurement tools moreover seems to have attracted new interest on the side
of the policy makers in the construction and use of social indicators in general.
As for the future, there are some indications of an increasing integration of
quality of life, sustainability and social cohesion not only at the conceptual
level, but also as far as measurement and indicator construction is concerned.

5.5. Composite Welfare Indices

The demand for and debate on summary indices, synthesizing a multitude of

welfare dimensions and indicators into one single or at least a restricted
number of composite measures, builds on a long-lasting tradition. However,
the interest in constructing composite indices has grown considerably yet
again. Moreover, some observers expect this issue to rank high on the future
research agenda: “With the tremendous increase in the richness of social data
available ... today as compared to two or three decades ago, a new generation
of researchers has returned to the task of summary index construction. The
field of social indicators probably will see several decades of such index
construction and competition among various indices - with a corresponding
need for careful assessments which indices have substantive validity ... in the
assessment of the quality of life and its changes over time and social space”
(Land, 2000a). A variety of approaches of how to aggregate information and
how to combine several indicators into one or more indices has already been
proposed in recent years (e.g. Diener, 1995; Estes, 1997; Osberg/Sharpe, 1998;
Miringoff/Miringoff, 1999). The best known and popular measure of this kind
is the Human Development Index published regularly by the United Nations’
Human Development Report Office (UNDP, 2001). On the other hand, it is
still controversial whether composite indices, as they are available so far, offer
appropriate tools for monitoring the quality of life and for which particular
purposes – within scientific research as well as in the policy making processes
– these kind of measures might be used. Too many methodological as well as
substantial problems related to the construction and use of composite indices
still seem to be solved insufficiently by now, such as identifying components,
aggregation algorithm, or weighting. Thus, we may expect continuing debates
and efforts in this field for years to come.

5.6. Comparative Monitoring and Analysis

In social indicators and quality of life research as in other fields of social re-
search, the comparative perspective has gained in importance. This is mainly
due to the ongoing processes of globalisation as well as the increasing eco-
nomic and political integration taking place in Europe and in other regions of
the world. More and better comparative information on living conditions and

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the quality of life is needed to establish ‘international best practice performance

benchmarks’ which can play an important role in monitoring and guiding social
performance at the national and supranational levels. Accordingly, in recent
years the data base for comparative monitoring and reporting activities has
been improved considerably, for example by establishing international surveys
such as the International Social Survey Program, the European Community
Household Panel Study,31 the Euromodule32 or the European Social Survey.33
To a considerable extend these surveys meet the request for coordinated
international surveys in the field of social indicators and quality of life research
(Vogel, 1997: 113), although some of them are not specially designed for this
particular purpose. Recent activities of data harmonisation such as those
initiated by Eurostat have also contributed largely to improve the information
base for comparative monitoring, reporting and analyses in the fields of social
indicators and quality of life research.

5.7. Increased Use of Indicators in Policy Making

There is some evidence, that social and other types of indicators are increas-
ingly being used as instruments for policy making. This tendency is most ob-
vious at the level of European institutions, where the use of indicators and
quality of life research as part of the policy making process. In particular, as a
follow-up to the Lisbon European Council, which adopted the strategic goal
that Europe should become the “most competitive and dynamic knowledge-
based economy in the world, capable of sustainable economic growth with
more and better jobs and greater social cohesion,“34 several indicator initia-
tives have been launched. Indicators to be developed and politically agreed
upon are thought to be used for monitoring progress on achieving the key
Lisbon objectives, including employment, sustainability and social cohesion
and inclusion. For monitoring the latter objectives social indicators are par-
ticularly relevant, as has been underlined by Frank Vandenbroucke, the Bel-
gian Minister of Social Affairs and Pensions: “the objective is ... to combine
a dynamic economy with social inclusion and protection.... In achieving this,
social indicators have a key role to play. A set of commonly agreed and de-
fined social indicators is essential to allow the Union to monitor progress to-
wards social inclusion” (Vandenbrouke, 2001). The European Unions’ Social
Protection Committee and its subgroup on social indicators was in charge to
15

31
The European Community Household Panel Study (ECHP) is going to be replaced
by Statistics of Income and Living Conditions (SILC) in 2003.
32
See Delhey et al. (2001).
33
The European Social Survey (ESS) has been developed under the auspices of the
European Science Foundation (ESF). The first survey covering 20 countries is
scheduled for fall 2002.
34
Presidency Conclusions, Lisbon European Council, March, 23-24, 2000. See
http://ue.eu.int/en/Info/eurocouncil/index.htm.

174
 Heinz-Herbert Noll

propose a respective set of indicators to be officially used at the European as

well as national levels.35 In order to support and enhance this complex and
ambitious exercise of agreeing on a common set of indicators, the Belgian
Government has launched a report on Indicators for Social Inclusion in the
European Union (Atkinson et al., 2002) as part of the Belgian EU-Presidency.
This report reviews previous work on social indicators, it assesses the strengths
and weaknesses of various indicators as measures of social inclusion and
makes recommendations for indicators to be selected and used at different
levels. As it seems by now, the potentials as well as limitations of using
indicators for such purposes are not much reflected yet. Thus, there obviously
is a need to address these questions more thoroughly and to establish regular
links and dialogues between policy making institutions and academic social
indicators and quality of life research.
The European Commission recently has also established a programme for
research in order “to improve understanding of the quality of life of individuals
and of society as a whole, including a sense of ‘well-being’ and of their
variations across Europe; to clarify how these are affected by key socio-
economic trends and to improve the basis for societal and economic policies
which promote quality of life and well-being” (European Commission, 2001:
12-13). By promoting quality of life research, the European Commission does
not only demonstrate the importance it attributes to quality of life as a goal of
societal development, but it starts also from the concern that the “political and
public debate in relation to the future development of the EU suffers from a
lack of comparative data in relation to the social well being and the quality of
life of European citizens” (European Commission, 2001: 16). Until now it is
unclear whether and how the lack of respective information identified will be
filled.

6. Conclusions

The birth of social indicators and quality of life research was closely related
to the formation of new goals of societal development, not least reflecting
structural and value changes as part of the transition from industrial to post-
industrial societies. Although social indicators and quality of life research
underwent various cycles of growing and declining attention and popularity,
they are now established fields of empirical social research in almost all parts
of the globe. From the beginning these research branches used to be
multidisciplinary, attracting the interests not only of sociologists and
statisticians, but also of psychologists, economists, political scientists, and not
least practitioners from various fields, in particular the policy making realm.
16

35
The report of this committee was accepted by the Employment and Social Affairs
Council in December 2001 and endorsed by the Laeken European Council soon
after.

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 Heinz-Herbert Noll

During the last three decades social indicators research has succeeded to
considerably improve the measurement of peoples’ quality of life as well as the
monitoring of general social conditions and change. Quality of life research has
moreover largely enhanced our knowledge of the components and determinants
of human well-being by developing theoretical models and advancing
empirical analysis on levels, changes and causes of well-being for various
populations. Whereas the use of objective and subjective indicators – a major
issue of the early stages of quality of life measurement – is now almost
common ground, new debates on utility versus agency related concepts – such
as Sen’s ‘capabilities approach’ - have emerged more recently. Today, social
reporting as the major application of social indicators and quality of life
research is well established within the information systems of numerous
national societies as well as international and supranational organisations,
providing empirically based knowledge on living conditions and well-being of
the whole population or specific subgroups within a society. Monitoring and
reporting tools as they have been developed in this tradition provide societies –
the general public as well as decisions makers – with the kind of information
and knowledge needed for continuous self-reflection. While social indicators
and social reports have successfully been used as descriptive monitoring tools,
their application and use for purposes like setting goals and priorities, or the
choice and evaluation of political programmes still seems to be problematic
and questionable. Yet, there is a growing demand for respective tools in the
fields of policy making, where social indicators are increasingly considered to
be useful tools for various purposes, as for example benchmarking. Additional
reasons for the growing popularity of social indicators and quality of life
research recently observed on the part of policy makers – as for example the
European Union - may be found in new policy objectives for societal
development like sustainability and social cohesion and the need for respective
monitoring tools, the processes of globalisation and internationalisation, new
models of governance and a trend towards evidence-based policy making
practices.
Recent trends in social indicators and quality of life research include the
use of more sophisticated methodologies and improved data sources, which
may facilitate a shift toward efforts to identify the ‘causes behind the symp-
toms’ measured by indicators. The growing emphasis given to the local as
well as supranational level as compared to the national level, international
comparisons and a special focus on children and senior citizens in social re-
porting activities are other recent developments in this field. Current ap-
proaches of quality of life measurement moreover increasingly account for
societal characteristics as compared to individual conditions as an important
component of the overall quality of life, which have been largely neglected in
previous approaches of empirical measurement and analysis. Also new im-
petus has been given to the construction of summary indices, synthesizing a
multitude of welfare dimensions and indicators into one or few composite
measures of overall well-being. However, the usefulness of these kind of

176
 Heinz-Herbert Noll

measures is still controversial and additional research is certainly needed to

provide better solutions for related methodological as well as substantial
problems.

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Sociological Knowledge Over Half a Century. Wiesbaden: VS Verlag für
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