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Definition

Systems of social indicators are systematically and purposefully selected, well defined, and clearly structured sets of indicators. In a more ambitious notion, also interrelationships among individual indicators covered by the system are supposed to be known and specified.

Description

Issues of developing indicator systems have been addressed within the field of social indicators research since its beginnings. Some authors considered it even a constitutional characteristic of social indicators to “be part of a coherent system of socio-economic measurement” (Olson, 1969: 339) or to be “components in a social system model” (Land, 1971: 323). Social indicator systems are generally considered as systematically selected sets of indicators usually structured by life domains, such as health, education or public safety. Efforts to construct systems of social indicators are typically facing some basic problems and challenges. First of all, they need to provide an answer to the key...

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Correspondence to Heinz-Herbert Noll .

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Noll, HH. (2014). Systems of Indicators. In: Michalos, A.C. (eds) Encyclopedia of Quality of Life and Well-Being Research. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-0753-5_2970

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-0753-5_2970

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