Experiencing the “Good Life”: Literary Views of Craniofacial Conditions and Quality of Life

2005 ◽  
Vol 42 (1) ◽  
pp. 14-18 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ronald P. Strauss ◽  
Carla Fenson

Objective This article is a qualitative approach to understanding how people with craniofacial conditions see quality in their lives and how they understand the components of building a sense of well-being or goodness in their lives. Literary selections from fiction, Web sites, and first-person accounts are examined and categorized into domains and themes to offer some insight into how quality of life is built into the lives of people with craniofacial conditions. Three domains are noted: (1) a personality and psychological domain; (2) a family, work, and social interactive domain; and (3) a cultural and societal domain. Within each domain, a number of themes are noted and discussed. Quotes from affected people and their families are offered to illustrate how they respond to and alter their lives and their world views. Many adults with craniofacial conditions find ways to live with their difference and to succeed using the measures they construct.

2009 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 5-23
Author(s):  
Elaine Graham

AbstractThe so-called 'happiness hypothesis', associated with the work of the economist Richard Layard, has attracted much public debate over recent years. Its main contention is that despite rising levels of material prosperity in the west, incidence of recorded happiness and greater quality of life has not increased accordingly. In considering the major contributory factors to happiness and well-being, however, Layard is not alone in identifying the significance of religious values and participation in religion for positive and enduring levels of happiness. In response, this article critiques some of the evidence correlating religion and well-being, as well as considering the broader and much more vexed question of how far public policy is capable of incorporating questions of belief and value into its indicators of happiness and the good life. Drawing on traditions of virtue ethics as the cultivation of 'the life well-lived', I ask whether specifically Christian accounts of human flourishing and the good life still have any bearing in the wider public domain, and what 'rules of engagement' might need to be articulated in any dialogue between Christian values and the discourse of theology and a pluralist society.


2010 ◽  
Vol 49 (4II) ◽  
pp. 863-879
Author(s):  
Rashida Haq Rashida Haq ◽  
Azkar Ahmed ◽  
Siama Shafique

Since quality of life research is essentially concerned with measuring and monitoring welfare. In order to measure quality of life, one must have a theory of what makes up a good life [Cobb (2000)]. There is a variety of such theories and notions of what constitutes a ‗good life‘ and correspondingly different concepts of welfare and quality of life have been developed. Various approaches and operationalisations are to be distinguished, each of which reveals a different concept of welfare and thus highlights different components and dimensions [Noll (2000)]. Among the various efforts to operationalise welfare in general and the quality of life concept in particular, two contrary approaches are to be distinguished, which define the two extreme positions on a broad continuum of concepts currently available: the Scandinavian level of living approach [Erickson (1993)] and the American quality of life approach [Campbell (1976)]. The Scandinavian approach focuses almost exclusively on resources and objective living conditions, whereas the American approach emphasises the subjective well-being of individuals as a final outcome of conditions and processes.


2000 ◽  
Vol 50 (4) ◽  
pp. 361-383 ◽  
Author(s):  
Prem S. Fry

Three hundred and thirty-one older adults participated in a study designed to examine their perceptions of what constitutes a reasonable quality of life. Participants responded to an open-ended questionnaire in which they were asked to state their priorities, preferences, aspirations, and concerns about their present and future quality of life. Responses were subjected to a principal components factor analysis which yielded four factors: 1) respondents' demands for specific guarantees; 2) respondents' aspirations and expectations for future quality of life; 3) fears and anxieties; and 4) external factors presenting a threat to quality of life. These factors accounted for 15 percent, 12 percent, 9.2 percent, and 7.1 percent, respectively, of the total variance. Additionally, data obtained from in-depth interviews with thirty-seven older adults were analyzed using a qualitative approach. Contrary to stereotypic notions that elderly persons are frail, vulnerable, and resigned to deteriorating conditions of well-being in late life, the results of both the qualitative and quantitative components of the study showed the majority of respondents as having clear demands for autonomy, control, and independence in making decisions, including the decision to terminate life. Implications are discussed in terms of future research on quality of life of older adults.


2021 ◽  
Vol 32 (2) ◽  
pp. 95-112
Author(s):  
Nik Shahrizan Nik Mad ◽  
Marzudi Md Yunus ◽  
Muhammad Shamsinor Abdul Azziz

Subjective well-being is the self-assessment of happiness, pleasure, satisfaction and quality of life, measured specifically and holistically. The assessment of subjective well-being is varied based on the area of focus of the researcher. Events that occur over some time also could affect an individual’s evaluation. Various factors assess well-being, such as character, love, wisdom, excitement and experiences leading to a good life. The evaluation of the positive and negative effects also affects the subjects’ emotions and mood during a study. Earlier studies showed that well-being is not merely related to income and ownership, but issues on health, activities, personality, emotions, mood, family, environment and various other factors. Therefore, this article aims to discuss aspects, assessment methods, theories and progress based on articles, books and research related to subjective well-being. This study utilises the literature review approach to collect data on subjective well-being. The finding shows that the level of subjective well-being is diverse and dynamic, and not limited to certain aspects and factors that could affect humans. Keywords: subjective well-being; self-assessment; happiness; life satisfaction; quality of life.


2021 ◽  
pp. 16-17
Author(s):  
Juliana Silva da Costa ◽  
Gisele Almeida de Lima ◽  
Júlio Cesar Pinto de Souza

The participation of the organizational psychologist defines the quality and productivity of the organization,becoming an important member of the company's human capital.The objective of this article is to demonstrate the importance of the psychologist in the recruitment and selection of employees of organizations, developing it with a qualitative approach in a bibliographical research. The scientific platform of Google Scholar, Scielo, MedLine and Capes Periodicals was used to survey sources of queries,limiting the search to books,academic papers and scientific articles produced in the last 5 years. The following keywords were also used: psychologist; recruitment and selection; organizations.The results indicate that the organizational psychologist has the important task of guiding their leaders to manage people in line with organizational goals,as much as current employees offer an improvement in the company's quality of life,well-being and the comfort of capital human,but also actively participating in the processes of recruitment and selection of new employees so that they are aligned with the objectives proposed by the organization, always seeking to generate results within the organization and maintain a balanced behavioral environment that is pleasant to all employees.


Author(s):  
Richard Cookson ◽  
Owen Cotton-Barratt ◽  
Matthew D. Adler ◽  
Miqdad Asaria ◽  
Toby Ord

This chapter proposes a practical measure of individual well-being to facilitate the economic evaluation of public policies. The authors propose to evaluate policies in terms of years of good life gained, in a practical and flexible way that complements and builds upon the standard outcome measures used in cost-effectiveness and cost–benefit analysis. The authors show how to do this by adjusting years of life lived for consumption-related quality of life—that is, the material standard of living—as well as health-related quality of life. This is a straightforward extension of the quality-adjusted life year metric used in health economics for measuring years of healthy life. The authors’ approach allows for differences between people in the marginal value of money. It also permits distributional impact analysis in terms of lifetime well-being—that is, how many good years of life different people can expect over the course of their lives. The authors aim to show how years of good life could be measured in practice by harnessing readily available data on three important elements of individual well-being: consumption, health-related quality of life, and mortality. They also aim to identify the main ethical assumptions needed to use this measure.


Author(s):  
Nazeem Muhajarine ◽  
Isobel Findlay

In this issue we set out to build a collection of research papers, commentaries of relevance, conversations that pique our interest, and reviews of books, with two central ideas of interest. One, we focused on the ever-relevant concept of ‘quality of life’ (the ‘good’ life) as an organizing theme. Second, it is on the perspectives and methods of community-engaged scholarship.


2003 ◽  
Vol 3 ◽  
pp. 1030-1040 ◽  
Author(s):  
Soren Ventegodt ◽  
Joav Merrick ◽  
Niels Jorgen Andersen

Quality of life (QOL) means a good life and we believe that a good life is the same as living a life with a high quality. This paper presents the theoretical and philosophical framework of the Danish Quality of Life Survey, and of the SEQOL, QOL5, and QOL1 questionnaires.The notion of a good life can be observed from subjective to the objective, where this spectrum incorporates a number of existing quality of life theories. We call this spectrum the integrative quality-of-life (IQOL) theory and discuss the following aspects in this paper: well being, satisfaction with life, happiness, meaning in life, the biological information system (�balance�), realizing life potential, fulfillment of needs, and objective factors.The philosophy of life outlined in this paper tries to measure the global quality of life with questions derived from the integrative theory of the quality of life. The IQOL theory is an overall theory or meta-theory encompassing eight more factual theories in a subjective-existential-objective spectrum. Other philosophies of life can stress other aspects of life, but by this notion of introducing such an existential depth into the health and social sciences, we believe to have taken a necessary step towards a new humility and respect for the richness and complexity of life.


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