1. Expert Group on Quality of Life Indicators
1st meeting
Item 5 - Indicators
15 June 2012
ESTAT.DDG.LAB: Laboratory for developments in cross-cutting statistical domains

2. Indicators: concept and basic features required
SSF Commission* report: recommended in particular developing QoL indicators covering multidimensional measures of people’s conditions that contribute to their life satisfaction.
Recommendation #6: (…) Steps should be taken to improve measures of people’s health, education, personal activities and environmental conditions, (…) social connections, political voice, and insecurity that can be shown to predict life satisfaction
(*) Commission on the Measurement of Economic Performance and Social Progress 2

3. Indicators: concept and basic features required
SSF Commission* report: recommended in particular developing QoL indicators covering multidimensional measures of people’s conditions that contribute to their life satisfaction.
Recommendation #7: Quality-of-life indicators in all the dimensions covered should assess inequalities in a comprehensive way
(*) Commission on the Measurement of Economic Performance and Social Progress 3

4. Indicators: concept and basic features required
SSF Commission* report: recommended in particular developing QoL indicators covering multidimensional measures of people’s conditions that contribute to their life satisfaction.
Recommendation #9: In addition to objective indicators of well- being, subjective measures of the QoL should be considered; (…) these include measures of the proportion of one’s time in which the strongest reported feeling is a negative one, measures based on counting the occurrence and severity of various objective features of people’s lives
(*) Commission on the Measurement of Economic Performance and Social Progress 4

5. Indicators: concept and basic features required
SSF Commission* report: recommended in particular developing QoL indicators covering multidimensional measures of people’s conditions that contribute to their life satisfaction.
Recommendation #9: Statistical offices should provide the information needed to aggregate across QoL dimensions, allowing the construction of different indexes …
(but NOT the composite indicator itself)
(*) Commission on the Measurement of Economic Performance and Social Progress 5

6. Indicators: concept and basic features required
SpG*: report of the Task Force 3 on Multidimensional measurement of the quality of life.
Since Quality of Life has been assessed as a multidimensional concept and therefore built on the basis of a multidimensional framework, the resulting set of indicators should be integrated in the form of a scoreboard.
(*) Sponsorship Group on Measuring Progress, Well-being and Sustainable Development 6

7. Classes of indicators On the basis of the manner they are constructed:
Basic indicators: those based on raw variables that are directly measured
Synthetic indicators for each dimension (or topic, i.e. sub- dimension) of QoL: they should be computed through the aggregation of several basic indicators,
whenever these basic indicators are highly correlated, so we could assume that they are measuring the same latent concept. 7

8. synthetic indicators
‘People At Risk Of Poverty or social Exclusion’ is one of the best examples of a synthetic indicator; it concerns mainly the dimension ‘material living conditions’, which is one of the different dimensions of quality of life.
It is synthetic in that it combines information on persons who are at risk of poverty, who are severely materially deprived, or who are living in households with very low work intensity. Persons are only counted 8

9. Classes of indicators
Whenever indicators capture distinct, but equally relevant topics, their aggregation might lack transparency and other uncorrelated basic indicators could be considered in parallel:
Primary indicators: measured at individual level on the basis of raw data from the survey with no further aggregation of variables
Complementary indicators cannot be computed at the individual level, but they are available as aggregates at the regional or national level (for cross-country comparisons). 9

10. Configuration and display of the set of indicators
The TF3 has identified one or two indicators as those that can act as headline indicators for each of the 8+1 dimensions.
Preference is given to synthetic indicators but, if the aggregation conditions are not met, primary or complementary indicators indicated are considered as headline indicators.
The choice of those headline indicators has been established by the TF as normative. However, it is advisable to continue the discussion on the list of suitable headline indicators and its implementation. 10

11. List of indicators (I) 11

12. List of indicators (II)12

13. List of indicators (III)13

14. Key implementation criteria
one synthetic indicator for each QoL (sub) dimension. (Validation through multivariate analysis techniques).
To remark the individual as the fundamental unit of analysis (micro data derived indicators whenever available).
To focus on the share of people that accumulate deprivations rather than average indexes that can hide heterogeneity within the population. 14

15. Open issues (I)
Further methodological work to fix the methodology related to the synthetic indicators, and specially on the aggregation methods (arithmetic averages? linear aggregation? geometric means? cut- off threshold based indicators?)
The focus on subjective measures has highlighted several problems regarding reliability and comparability (though subjective aspects are necessary for capturing an adequate picture for QoL). 15

16. Open issues (II)
A validation process for appropriate benchmarks, via both statistical analysis and consultations with experts
Assessment of indicators when they draw on different surveys or when they target different populations (e.g. whole population vs. population at work).
Recognised statistical standards in some specific dimensions (productive and valued activities, natural and living environment, economic insecurity, governance and basic rights). 16