Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2-1-2008

Subjects

Quality of life -- Measurement, Quality of life -- Psychological aspects, Well-being -- Measurement, Basic needs, Social indicators

Abstract

While Quality of Life (QOL) has long been an explicit or implicit policy goal, adequate definition and measurement have been elusive. Diverse "objective" and "subjective" indicators across a range of disciplines and scales, and recent work on subjective well-being (SWB) surveys and the psychology of happiness have spurred renewed interest. Drawing from multiple disciplines, we present an integrative definition of QOL that combines measures of human needs with subjective well-being or happiness. QOL is proposed as a multiscale, multi-dimensional concept that contains interacting objective and subjective elements. We relate QOL to the opportunities that are provided to meet human needs in the forms of built, human, social and natural capital (in addition to time) and the policy options that are available to enhance these opportunities. Issues related to de?ning, measuring, and scaling these concepts are discussed, and a research agenda is elaborated. Policy implications include strategies for investing in opportunities to maximize QOL enhancement at the individual, community, and national scales.

Description

This work is distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

DOI

10.5194/sapiens-1-11-2008

Persistent Identifier

http://archives.pdx.edu/ds/psu/8351

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