Abstract
This paper introduces a model for conductingresearch on living conditions among peoplesthat have experienced rapid social, culturaland economic change in countries where anon-parallel development has occurred. Thismodel was developed by the researchers ofSLICA, A Survey of Living Conditions inthe Artic; Inuit, Saami and the IndigenousPeoples of Chukotka, which was initiated byStatistics Greenland in 1997.The point of departure for this model is acritique of contemporary living conditionssurveys carried out by national statisticalbureaus in economically, technologically andculturally segmented areas. The point of viewis that these studies erroneously assume thatthe populations they investigate arehomogeneous, and that consensus concerningindividual social and economic objectivesexists. This usually leads to research designsand indicators of individual well-being thatreflect the dominant culture, or the prevalentway of living and thinking in these countries.The focus of this paper is on the researchdesign of SLICA. The implementation of twoimportant methodological challenges isdiscussed. Namely, (1) how to secure acontext-specific concept of well-being whichalso mirrors the life forms and the prioritiesof the respondents and (2) how to measureimpacts of structural change on individualwell-being.
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Andersen, T., Poppel, B. Living Conditions in the Arctic. Social Indicators Research 58, 191–216 (2002). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1015787901370
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1015787901370