Tuesday 14th July      Wednesday 15th July      Thursday 16th July      Friday 17th July     

Tuesday 14th July, 16:00 - 17:30 Room: N-131

Survey data in composite indexes of well-being and socio-economic development 2
Convenor	Professor Krzysztof Zagorski (Kozminski University )

Session Details

There is a growing interest in composite indexes of well-being and socio-economic development, such as OECD “Better Life Index”, Kingdom of Buthan’s “Gross National Happiness”, UNDP “Human Development Index”, NEF “Happy Planet Index, a bit more recent proposal by Fitoussi, Sen and Stiglitz, Polish ALK “Index of Balanced Socio-Economic Development” etc. All of them are elaborated in a “beyond GDP” paradigm and in a tradition of social indicators research. Some are limited to objective and subjective social conditions only, some other combine social and economic dimensions, using both survey data and social as well as economic statistics. There are several substantive and methodological problems of these indexes, such as ways of selecting particular simple indicators (index components), relevance of objective and subjective indicators (especially those obtained by social surveys), weighting, constructing “middle-level” indexes and analyzing their interrelations, defining “leading” and “lagging” indexes, checking reliability and validity, analyzing the trends, generalizing and interpreting the results, etc. The papers discussing some of these issues or similar problems of integrating subjective and objective survey data with official and other statistical data into more general indexes at international, national or sub-national level are invited. Both methodological and substantive papers may be accepted, but the preference will be given to papers dealing jointly with the methodology of index construction and the interpretation of obtained results.

Paper Details

1. Re-examination of individual and national variables to explain subjective well-being
Miss Shuchen Wang (National Taiwan University)

It has been established a number of composite index intend to measure multi-dimensional well-being. Although recently years several articles have been identified the individual-level and societal-economic level determinants of well-being, most of them using regression analysis to confirm these multivariable relationships. However, is it all relevance between these objective and subjective indicators, or just some of them theoretical relevance? Also, in methodical issue, regression analysis fails to account for the cross-level problems and results in more significant results. In this study, we will re-examination these variables by using multilevel analysis.

2. The increasing importance of survey data in indexes of public health
Professor Andrei Veikher (National Research University “Higher School of Economics” - St. Petersburg,)

The health indicator is the element in composite indexes of well-being. Currently, assessment of health status of the population will not be adequate without survey data. Modern health indicators is a composite of two elements: life expectancy and period of life, burdened with illnesses. The second element is calculated from data on morbidity, which is underestimated because of the wide use of instruments of self-diagnostics and various forms of self-treatment. Used a new method of comparing the survey data with administrative data of medical services "evaluation hidden morbidity with external validation + full account of morbidity"

3. Synthetic index to measure the prevalence of personal accidents in the European Union
Dr Mercedes Camarero (Department of Sociology. Pablo de Olavide University)

The study that we present consists in the design, construction and calculation of a synthetic index to measure the annual prevalence, weighted by the seriousness of their consequences, of personal accidents in the 28 member countries of the European Union. The index is calculated based on data from several sources: Statistics on causes of death, the different administrative registries that provide data on "hospital discharges" in each country, and micro-data from the first wave and, when available, the second wave, of the European Health Interview Survey (EHIS). The prevalence of accidents is measured in “death equivalent units” per 100.

4. The Crime Safety Index: a composite indicator about concern and fear of crime
Dr Manuel Jesús Caro Cabrera (Universidad de Sevilla)

The Crime Safety Index is a composite indicator that attempts to incorporate into a unitary measure two key concepts of criminological research, concern about and fear of crime, as part of a system of indicators designed to measure social quality in European countries. The extensive criminological literature on these two notions has not been fully clear about their theoretical and empirical similarities and differences. This presentation exposes the theoretical nuances of both concepts and proposes an empirical approach to measuring them as part of a more complex composite index, Crime safety index.