Abstract
The idea of progress, which is usually considered to be a child of the age of enlightenment and a ‘trademark’ of modernity, has seen a remarkable revival in recent years in conceptual as well as measurement terms. Apparently, the renewed interest is closely related to the currently flourishing debate on well-being and its measurement ‘beyond GDP’. In its first conceptual part, this article presents a brief review of the history and the different notions of the idea of progress and discusses also current views and discourses concerning the meaning of progress in our contemporary societies. In its second part, the article addresses measurement issues and distinguishes different measurement approaches. While focusing on the crucial issue of unidimensional measurement of a multidimensional concept like progress, two approaches are discussed in more detail: composite indices and life satisfaction as a summary measure of subjective well-being. Whereas the construction of composite indices is confronted with various methodological challenges, some of them apparently not yet sufficiently met, life satisfaction turns out to be a poor measure of progress, due to its insensitivity to change and particular susceptibility to adaptation mechanisms.
This article is a revised and extended version of a long entry on “Societal Progress” in the “Encyclopedia of Quality of Life and Well-Being Research”, edited by Alex Michalos.
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Notes
- 1.
I prefer to use the broader term ‘societal progress’ rather than ‘social progress’ as the latter has a strong connotation to social issues as they are addressed by welfare state policies.
- 2.
Modernization theory, which is not undisputed, addresses and analyses the processes of modernization of societies as a sequential and progressive transition from traditional to modern’ societies, eventually distinguishing different preconditions – such as value and life style changes – as well as different stages.
- 3.
E.g. according to Norbert Elias (1969), the progressive evolution of civilization is to be considered as unintended and not rationally achieved progress.
- 4.
As a policy goal sustainability or sustainable development was for the first time proposed by the Brundtland Commission in its 1987 report “Our Common Future”.
- 5.
Alex Michalos has been an eminent member and protagonist of this movement over a long period of time in many respects. Apart from his countless well-respected scholarly contributions, he was not only the founder and longtime editor of the first and most esteemed specialized international journal on “Social Indicators Research”, but also a main driver of a successful institutionalization of social indicators research, e.g. in his role as a ‘founding father’ of the Working Group (now Research Committee) ‘Social Indicators’ in the International Sociological Association (see Noll and Michalos 2014).
- 6.
For an extensive review of currently existing social monitoring and reporting activities in Europe see Noll and Berger (2014).
- 7.
Alex Michalos actually is one of the “foundational leaders” of the Canadian Index of Well-Being project and continues to be a member of the “CIW Canadian Research Advisory Group”.
- 8.
This does not mean, that average life satisfaction levels turn out to be totally invariant across time. Average satisfaction may go up or down in certain periods of time (Noll 2008: 7f), but – according to the available empirical evidence – in the long run there seems to be little change overall.
- 9.
Doubts that satisfaction or happiness indicators are well qualified to measure progress, result also from the fact that the answering scales used are closed rather than open ended, e.g. 0–10, 1–7, and thus – contrary to household income, GDP, and almost all other objective progress-indicators – do not allow unlimited increase of scale values (Noll 2013: 8).
- 10.
This is not to say that subjective social indicators in general are necessarily poor measures of progress. There are other sorts of subjective social indicators, which seem to be much less affected by adaptation.
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Noll, HH. (2016). Progress: Concept and Measurement. In: Maggino, F. (eds) A Life Devoted to Quality of Life. Social Indicators Research Series, vol 60. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-20568-7_6
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