scholarly journals Some Critical Reflections on the Measurement of Social Sustainability and Well-Being in Complex Societies

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (22) ◽  
pp. 12679
Author(s):  
Alberto Arcagni ◽  
Marco Fattore ◽  
Filomena Maggino ◽  
Giorgio Vittadini
Keyword(s):  
Structural Information ◽  
Social Indicators ◽  
Social Sustainability ◽  
Real Data ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Complex Societies ◽  
Discussion Paper ◽  
Social Phenomena ◽  
Social Measurement ◽  
Numerical Precision

The aim of this discussion paper is to raise awareness of the conceptual and practical limits of mainstream practices in social measurement and to suggest possible directions for social indicator construction, in view of effectively supporting policies for social sustainability and well-being promotion. We start with a review of the epistemological issues raised by the measurement of social phenomena, investigate the notion of social complexity, and discuss the critical link between it and measurement. We then suggest that social indicators should be primarily designed to build structural syntheses of the data, unfolding the patterns and stylizing the complexity of social phenomena, rather than computed pursuing numerical precision, through hardly interpretable aggregated measures. This calls for tools and algorithms capable of rendering structural information, preserving the essential traits of complexity and overcoming the limitations of classical aggregation procedures. We provide some examples along this line, using real data pertaining to regional well-being in OECD countries.

scholarly journals Small Area Estimation of Latent Economic Well-being

2019 ◽  
pp. 004912411982616 ◽  
Author(s):  
Angelo Moretti ◽  
Natalie Shlomo ◽  
Joseph W. Sakshaug
Keyword(s):  
Small Area ◽  
Local Level ◽  
Small Area Estimation ◽  
Social Indicators ◽  
Weighted Average ◽  
Real Data ◽  
Well Being ◽  
The European Union ◽  
Area Estimation ◽  
Prediction Approach

Small area estimation (SAE) plays a crucial role in the social sciences due to the growing need for reliable and accurate estimates for small domains. In the study of well-being, for example, policy makers need detailed information about the geographical distribution of a range of social indicators. We investigate data dimensionality reduction using factor analysis models and implement SAE on the factor scores under the empirical best linear unbiased prediction approach. We contrast this approach with the standard approach of providing a dashboard of indicators or a weighted average of indicators at the local level. We demonstrate the approach in a simulation study and a real data application based on the European Union Statistics for Income and Living Conditions for the municipalities of Tuscany.

Urban and rural millennials: Heterogeneity of the young adult generation

2019 ◽  
pp. 5-28
Author(s):  
Vadim V. Radaev
Keyword(s):  
Coming Out ◽  
Generational Differences ◽  
Cohort Analysis ◽  
Social Indicators ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Generational Cohort ◽  
Rural Infrastructure ◽  
Sociological Approach ◽  
Monitoring Survey

A sociological approach towards the generational cohort analysis is developed. A special emphasis is made upon the youngest adult generation of millennials coming out of their adolescence in the 2000s. A broad range of social indicators is used for empirical exploration of intra-generational differences between urban and rural millennials. Data were collected from the annual Russian Longitudinal Monitoring Survey (RLMS-HSE) in 2003—2016. Numerous significant differences have been revealed with regard to the educational level, family planning, use of modern gadgets and digital technologies, commitment to healthy lifestyles, and some values. Some practices are more widely spread among rural millennials, whereas other practices are more characteristic of urban millennials. Most of revealed differences are explained by the lower level of material well-being of rural millennials and lower quality of rural infrastructure.

An Overview of Creative Placemaking as an Enabler for a Sustainable Urban Regeneration

2020 ◽  
Vol 5 (13) ◽  
pp. 345
Author(s):  
Nurul Atikah Ramli ◽  
Norsidah Ujang
Keyword(s):  
Urban Design ◽  
Publishing House ◽  
Social Sustainability ◽  
Urban Regeneration ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Significant Function ◽  
Creative Placemaking ◽  
International Publishing ◽  
Urban Places ◽  
Open Access Article

As the rapid growth of cities continues to pose a significant threat to the well-being of people, its adverse effects have moved to the forefront of social sustainability. Urban regeneration has become one of the adaptations in solving a social issue. Alongside these interventions, creative placemaking emerges as an evolving field of practice driving a broader agenda for growth and transformation of cities. This paper reviews the concept of creative placemaking as an approach to urban regeneration and theories extracted from planning and urban design literature. The findings provide an understanding of the significant function of social attributes of place in crafting strategies in the creation of successful creative placemaking.Keywords: Urban regeneration; Creative placemaking; Urban places; Social sustainabilityeISSN: 2398-4287 © 2020. The Authors. Published for AMER ABRA cE-Bs by e-International Publishing House, Ltd., UK. This is an open access article under the CC BYNC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/). Peer–review under responsibility of AMER (Association of Malaysian Environment-Behaviour Researchers), ABRA (Association of Behavioural Researchers on Asians) and cE-Bs (Centre for Environment-Behaviour Studies), Faculty of Architecture, Planning & Surveying, Universiti Teknologi MARA, Malaysia.DOI: https://doi.org/10.21834/e-bpj.v5i13.2056

scholarly journals Perceived Sensory Dimensions of Green Areas: An Experimental Study on Stress Recovery

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (10) ◽  
pp. 5419
Author(s):  
Sanaz Memari ◽  
Mahdieh Pazhouhanfar ◽  
Patrik Grahn
Keyword(s):  
Social Sustainability ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Natural Environments ◽  
Film Clip ◽  
Cultural Ecosystem Services ◽  
Human Needs ◽  
Green Areas ◽  
Post Test ◽  
Health Promoting ◽  
Health And Well Being

Natural environments have been shown to promote health, and are, therefore, important for achieving social sustainability in cities. As cities grow and become denser, it is important to develop knowledge about the characteristics of natural environments that work to promote health. Perceived Sensory Dimensions (PSDs) is a tool that defines eight different cultural ecosystem services. They correspond to different human needs (rest, exercise, socialising, pleasure, or security) resulting in rehabilitation and health and well-being promotion. An experiment was conducted to study the potential of PSDs to restore people who experienced stressful accidents. One hundred and fifty-seven participants were recruited and asked first to watch a film clip of serious accidents, then to look at the pictures, depicting one particular type of PSDs, while listening to its respective audio recording. Their stress levels were measured before exposure to the stressor (baseline), after exposure to the stressor (pre-test), and after exposure to a particular type of PSDs (post-test). The results show that all eight PSDs effectively provide mental recovery, but there are statistical differences in their potentials. As such, it is proposed that the combined potential of the PSDs is needed, and should be used to increase the capacity and supply of health-promoting urban green areas.

Enhancing social indicators research in a forest-dependent community

1999 ◽  
Vol 75 (5) ◽  
pp. 771-780 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Parkins
Keyword(s):  
Social Capital ◽  
Social Indicators ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Statistical Information ◽  
Social Changes ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
Measure Change ◽  
Local Residents ◽  
And Migration ◽  
Northern Alberta

Forest industry host communities are receiving increased attention from policy makers, academics, and municipal leaders. Recently, this attention is trained on measuring social and economic change at the community level and on identifying and developing avenues to greater community well-being. This paper examines aspects of two common social indicators, employment and migration, in the context of a forest-dependent community in Northern Alberta. By using statistical information along with two other major data sources that include interviews with local residents and a variety of reports from local institutions, specific social changes taking place within the community are described. Readers are cautioned against relying solely on statistical information to measure change and are encouraged to triangulate data with local sources. Such efforts may be more time consuming but the results are likely to provide more important insights into how and why certain communities are prospering while others are struggling. The paper concludes with a discussion of social capital as a crucial dimension of community well-being. Key words: forest-dependent communities, social indicators, employment, migration, mobility, community well-being, social capital

Social Indicators: For Individual Well-Being or Social Control?

1980 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 89-113 ◽  
Author(s):  
Francois Nectoux ◽  
John Lintott ◽  
Roy Carr-Hill
Keyword(s):  
Social Indicators ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Social Progress ◽  
Social Planning ◽  
Modern Capitalism ◽  
Social Concerns ◽  
The World ◽  
Social Statistics ◽  
Direct Use

This article is concerned with the way that social statistics reflect particular views of the world, and focuses on the specific case of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development's program to develop a set of social indicators. Some illustrations of previous attempts to collect social indicators are given, but the bulk of the article discusses the series of contradictions which regulate the generation and use of statistics by governments, the principal one being between measures which play the ideological role of displaying economic and social “progress” and measures which are of direct use in social planning. This is discussed both for social indicators in general and for social concerns linked to the measurement of health. The article ends with an attempt to evaluate the future of the OECD program within the development of modern capitalism.

scholarly journals Methodology to Identify and Prioritise the Social Aspects to Be Considered in the Design of More Sustainable Residential Buildings—Application to a Developing Country

Buildings ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 8 (10) ◽  
pp. 130 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nisreen Ardda ◽  
Ricardo Mateus ◽  
Luís Bragança
Keyword(s):  
Developing Countries ◽  
Sustainability Assessment ◽  
Residential Buildings ◽  
Social Indicators ◽  
Social Sustainability ◽  
Developed Countries ◽  
Sustainability Indicators ◽  
International Standards ◽  
Social Aspects ◽  
The Social

The priorities in the design of more sustainable buildings are quite dependent on the specific social context. In developing countries, the sustainability concept and priorities in the residential buildings sector are quite different from the ones of the developed countries, since there are still basic needs to answer. Therefore, this research is aimed at contributing to a better understanding of the concept of social sustainability in the residential building sector of the developing countries. A methodology to define and prioritise the social sustainability indicators is proposed and applied in the context of Palestine. The presented methodology is based on the sustainability indicators of international standards, on the most well know building sustainability assessment methods and in the analysis of their application to a specific context. It includes a methodology to prioritise the list of social indicators, by considering the expectations of two groups of building stakeholders: designers and building users. At the end, this research proposes a framework of social aspects to consider in the design of more sustainable residential buildings in West Bank, Palestine that is composed of twenty-one indicators, distributed among six sustainability categories and ranked according to their weight in the overall of sustainability level.

SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC WELFARE AND THE LEVEL OF LIFE SATISFACTION ON THE EXAMPLE OF SELECTED COUNTRIES

2021 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 19-30
Author(s):  
Ewa Polak
Keyword(s):  
Life Satisfaction ◽  
Social Indicators ◽  
Life Quality ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Social Conditions ◽  
Economic Welfare ◽  
Quality Life ◽  
Methods Of Measurement ◽  
Economic Well Being

The article presents problems related to life quality, life satisfaction and sense of happiness, their determinants, methods of measurement and dependence on the level of wealth and other conditions. Life quality is an abstract blurred term which depends on numerous factors. There is not any single, comprehensive definition, measure or cause of such phenomena as life quality, economic well-being or sense of happiness. Their evaluation depends on economic, political, cultural and social conditions and also on individual features, expectations and attitudes. More and more often, next to hard economic coefficients, social indicators are applied, and synthetic measures of the level of life quality or social and economic well-being are developed. The level of social development is strongly affected by the quality of human capital. The article presents an attempt at matching parameters and indicators which characterise various aspects of life quality and applying them for the development of synthetic measures of life quality in its different aspects. It is also aimed at comparing them with the current results obtained by research studies in this field. The aim of the article is to provide an assessment of diversification in the levels of living conditions observed in some selected countries – its size, specificity and cause-effect relations with the use of the listed parameters and measures. The research on life quality should be applied to the assessment of the efficiency of social and economic policy which has been currently implemented.

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