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Survey on Agenda for the Future of Social Indicators/Quality of Life Research

Survey on Agenda for the Future of Social Indicators/Quality of Life Research
By
Alex C. Michalos and Kenneth C. Land

In “Fifty years after the social indicators movement: Has the promise been fulfilled? An assessment and an agenda for the future”, Land and Michalos (2017) reviewed the history of the movement and made some recommendations for work in the future. Filomena Maggino circulated the paper for comments from several colleagues and friends, and papers from 20 of them were published in Social Indicators Research with “Replies to our Commentators” by Michalos and Land. The 20 comment papers came from Ferran Casas, Scott Huebner, Robert Cummins, Valerie Møller, Heinz-Herbert Noll, Christian Suter, Ming-Chang Tsai, Daniel Shek, Florence Wu, Wolfgang Glatzer, Enrico di Bella, Lucia Leporatti, Filomena Maggino, John Helliwell, Ruut Veenhoven, Jeroen Boelhouwer, Mariano Rojas, Chris Barrington-Leigh, Alice Escande and Linda Laura Sabbadini.

At the end of our replies, we listed 28 recommendations for future research drawn from all these scholars. As a final step in this exercise, we thought it would be helpful to circulate a short questionnaire among current scholars in the field to rate the recommendations and to elicit some that we may have missed. Hopefully, the ratings will provide researchers with some priority topics for future exploration.

The questionnaire will only take about 10 minutes of your time. Please rate each recommendation on a five-response scale from unimportant (1), below average importance (2), average importance (3), above average importance (4), very important (5). In case we missed something, finally write in specific others.
We appreciate and thank you for your help.
1.There should be increased attention and research on:
unimportant
below average importance
average importance
above average importance
very important
the use of social indicators “to evaluate specific programs and determine their impact”
the impact of diverse forms of human agency (e.g., wants, attitudes, beliefs, choices, hopes, etc.) on the objective features and overall quality of life
multi-level studies capturing the impacts of diverse kinds of communities and social, economic, political and environmental features on the quality of life
continuous time analyses revealing more precise causal connections
general theories of the quality of life based on holistic, comprehensive analyses across disciplines and applicable to diverse communities across the globe
the impact of globalization on the quality of life, including analyses of both positive and negative reactions to globalization by sub-populations in both developed and developing countries
the impact of digital electronic engineering, computerization and robotization on all forms of work and the quality of life
the influence of social media on human relations and evaluations
the impact of immigration and refugees on the quality of life
opportunities giving voice to children and adolescents, and their quality of life
the roles of personality development over the whole life span of individuals
the measurement of human rights and their impact on the quality of life
analyses of sustainable development and its relationships with quality of life
diverse notions of eudaimonic and mere psychological happiness
quality of life with different motivational agendas and life goals across the life span
subjective well-being homeostasis and change theory
analyses of longitudinal panel studies
collaborative uses of diverse social monitoring and reporting activities by official statistical offices and independent agencies
comparative analyses with now-casting and forecasting
the impacts of “new communication spaces” on the quality of life
the impact of violent assaults on the quality of life of people engaged in innocent activities and those who learn about the assaults mainly through news media
the development of new measures and indexes concerning specific groups like refugees, immigrants and mothers
the development of new measures concerning specific issues like corporate social responsibility and financial secrecy jurisdictions
industrialization, commodification and the importance of non-marketed goods to quality of life
the interaction and mutual benefits of qualitative and quantitative research
invariance testing applied to diverse datasets and big data
the interaction and mutual benefits of research in relatively small community “laboratories of democracy” and large scale survey research
 the diverse problems related to big data, e.g., legal and ethical problems, statistical quality, comparability with traditional social indicators, and mutual influence
2.Please add any other items that you think should be included in the list above:
3.Please select:
4.Age
5.Country of residence