Definition
A classical definition states that social indicators are statistical time series “…used to monitor the social system, helping to identify changes and to guide intervention to alter the course of social change” (Ferriss, 1988, p. 601).
Examples are unemployment rates, crime rates, estimates of life expectancy, health status indices such as the average number of “healthy” days (or days without activity limitations) in the past month for a specific population, school enrollment rates, average achievement scores on a standardized test, rates of voting in elections, measures of subjective well-being such as satisfaction with life as a whole, and composite well-being/quality of life indices such as the Human Development Index.
This entry describes the history of social indicators and its evolution. It draws upon and updates Land (2000).
Description
The Social Indicators Movement of the 1960s and 1970s and Its...
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Land, K.C. (2014). History of Social Indicators and Its Evolution. 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_3318
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