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Journal of International and ComparativeSocial WelfarePublication details, including instructions for authors andsubscription information:http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rjcs18

Preferences for domains associated withquality of lifeEli Frenkel a & Yossef Meller aa Paul Baerwald School of Social Work , Hebrew University ofJerusaleumPublished online: 31 Jan 2008.

To cite this article: Eli Frenkel & Yossef Meller (1987) Preferences for domains associated withquality of life, Journal of International and Comparative Social Welfare, 3:1-2, 21-29, DOI:10.1080/17486838708415612

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PREFERENCES FOR DOMAINS ASSOCIATED WITH QUALITY OF LIFE

Eli Frenkel and Yossef Meller*

ABSTRACT

Research pertaining to sujective social indicators deals with people's feelings about their external circumstances of living. This subjective information completes the picture depicted by objective social indicators research. Both subjective and objective social indicators are required by policy makers as inputs for social policy formulation. The present study is concerned with people's preferences for the various domains which contribute to a general feeling of happiness - a subject not studied enough in the research on subjective indicators. The relative importance attributed to various domains which contribute to a happy life and the universality and stability of the ranking were studied on three groups of students. The results were compared with findings obtained in the United States. Good health, family life, and peace of mind were considered the most important domains. Furthermore, these preferences were found to be universal and stable. The findings indicate that the universality and stability are higher for those domains related to basic human needs than for domains whose context is cultural.

INTRODUCTION

Social indicators serve to describe the socio-economic situation of a population thereby guiding policy-makers in decisions regarding social and economic issues. For several decades governments have gathered data on the socio-economic situation of their populations in the attempt to develop a set of indicators which would loyally depict societal conditions and trends (OECD 1982). But for a tool to be useful to policy-makers, it must do more than merely describe a given situation. One of the important goals of the social indicators movement is the development of analytic instruments of utility to social planning and social engineering; hence the concern with criteria of social preferences (UNESCO 1979).

*Paul Baerwald School of Social Work, Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

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Social policy aims to ma-uimize social welfare, e.g. to improve well-being and happiness of people, which is essentially an individual subjective condition. Nevertheless, the social indicators movement began by collecting objective informtion about societal conditions on the assumption that people's happiness is directly related to their external circumstances. However, it has become clear that there is not an invariably direct connection between a person's external circumstances - the objective situation - and his subjective feelings of these circumstances (Kennedy et a1 1978). For example, it was found that there is almost no relationship between the number of social interactions and activities and a feeling of social well-being (Donald and Ware 1982), or between income level and a general sense of happiness (Campbell 1981). Individuals' feelings of happiness and well-being result from the interplay of their objective circumstances - such as income level, housing density - and their subjective perceptions of these cirucmstances. During recent years, research has been undertaken on the quality of life of a population. Its primary concern has been the collection of data regarding subjective feelings in order to supplement the objective social indicators in depicting a population's state of .well-being (Allardt 1976; Andrew and Withey 1976; Campbell et. al. 1976; Szalai and Andrews 1980). An example of the combined use of both objective and subjective indicators appears in "Social Indicator 111", a publication of the US Government on social indicators in that country. The publication's general introduction presents findings regarding feelings about the quality of life in the United States. In addition, the section on each domain studied - family, health, education, etc - opens with an assessment of public perceptions regarding that domain.

Social indicators mainly describe a concrete situation at a given point in time. Although the description of a given situation .- such as the crime rate or per capita area of public parks in urban zones - may guide policy-makers in their decisions, the differential allocation of resources to different domains by which preferences are expressed, is not directly and exclusively determined by such descriptions alone, but rather by the extent of social importance attached to that domain. This holds true for the subjective indicators as well. The description of a given level of well-being among people in regard to various domains of life, does not yet indicate which domains are most important for their happiness. We can elicit information about the relative importance of each domain to general happiness by asking people's preferences for the different domains. On the other hand, such preference questions provide no information on the existing concrete situation. The attribution of relative importance to a particular domain does not offer evidence of the respondents' concrete feelings toward the domain under discussion. The difference between these two types of information - descriptions of feelings about a particular domain in a given situation and the domain's rank of preference in contributing to general feeling of happiness - is demonstrated in "Social Indicators 111" which presents both types of information. The domain of health, for example, is in fifth place as measured by levels of concrete feelings, but heads the entire list in its perceived importance to general happiness (US 1980, Table A, p.LV).

In contrast to direct queries about a person's concrete situation, questions of preferences relate in another way to two issues inherent in the study of subjective indicators: the issue of cultural relativism, or universality (Kennedy et. al. 1978; Szalai and Andrews 1980) and the issue of stability or validity (Atkinson 1982; Larsen et. al. 1985).

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The problem of cultural relativism, or universality, questions the extent to whih feelings of well-being or happiness in general or as pertains to specific domains of their life vary among diverse populations or sub-groups of the same population such as different age strata. Studies report disparities in the extent of well-being of different groups which are mainly due to each group's particular external circumstances (Campbell 1981; Szalai and Andrews 1980). We assume that people's designation of preferences is more contingent on basic human needs than on their concrete external circumstances, and therefore we hypothesise that the designation of preferences is a more universal phenomena. Thus, marked agreement in preference designation among diverse groups will indicate the universality of the domains which contribute to a general feeling of happiness.

The problem of stability, or validity, asks to what extent reports of subjective feelings reflect a condition which is stable over time, or, on the contrary, are influenced by immediate, incidental and fluctuating circumstances, such as the weather, momentary fatigue, the occurence of a significant event when responding to the questionniare, and so forth. Here too we hypothesise that the designation of preferences for domains associated with happiness will be less dependent on inmediate external circumstances. Similarity in preferences of domains considered to contribute to feelings of happiness among groups in diverse circumstances will indicate considerable stability in the perception of their relative importance.

The purposes of this study are: (1) To explore the relative importance, namely the ranking of preferences of domains which contribute to a general sense of happiness. ( 2 ) To test the .above mentioned hypotheses on universality and stability.

METHODOLOGY

In order to explore these questions, we chose to use a broad, summary question which asked people's preferences for the various domains of quality for life which are listed in Social Indicators I11 (US 1980). The question was presented to different Israeli groups, each characterised by different inmediate circumstances. Comparisons of the relative preferences among the Israeli groups and between these groups and findings for the population in the United States regarding their preferences for different domains in contributing to a feeling of general happiness will indicate preferred domains, as well as the extent of universality and stability of these preferences.

The Comparison Groups

The reference group is the group studied in the publication referred to above (US 1980) which represents the population of the United States. For the purpose of comparison, we chose three groups of students (N=222) enrolled at two Israeli universities during the 1984/85 academic year: (1) first year social work students at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, (2) first year law students at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, and (3) first year social work students at Haifa University. In contrast to the American population the students in these groups are younger, better educated, typically unmarried, and given to different concrete external circumstances, i.e. the socio-economic conditions of Israeli versus American society. There were also differences among the three Israeli student groups: geographic differences - two were from Jerusalem in the centre of the country, and one was from Haifa

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in the north; differences in professional ambitions and, probably, world-view - two groups were studying social work, and the third group studied law. An additional difference which we considered particularly relevant for subjective feelings was that one group was facing mid-term exams (social work in Jerusalem), one had just completed their exams (law in Jerusalem) and one was in the midst of the semester (social work in Haifa). The greater the similarity found among the groups in their preferences regarding quality of life within this variability in demographic characteristics, education, world-view and current external characteristics, the greater the evidence in support of universality and stability of the domains perceived to be the most significant for people's general feelings of happiness.

Data Collection

The questionnaire distributed to the three groups of students listed alphabetically eleven items presenting domains which contribute to a general feeling of happiness. These items are the same as those which appear in the report of findings regarding the importance of the different domains to a feeling of general happiness in the United States (see Table 1). The students were asked to rank the items according to the extent of their importance for a happy life. It should be pointed out that although the question used in the United States referred to the same items, it was a little different. The American subjects were asked to say how important each item on the list is for a happy life, and the report presents the percentage of subjects who replied "very important" about each specific domain. However, since we were interested in comparing the ranks of the extent of importance of the different domains to a general feeling of happiness, the subjects in our study were asked to rank the items. In the United States report the items' ranks were determined by the writers of Social Indicators I11 according to the percentage of people who responded that the item was "very important".

Data Analysis

Because of the relatively small size of the groups .of students, and the small differences among the sub-groups in the attribution of importance to the items, we present the items' ranks in the form of medians. This means that on a scale whose range is from one to eleven (the number of items), where one refers to the most important and eleven to the least important, the median is the value below which 50 per cent of the students in the group gave it greater importance. The lower the value of the median, the more important is the perceived value of the item.

RESULTS

Table 1 presents the ranking of the items according to their medians for the total group of students, and for each of the three separate student groups, as well as the ranking of these items in the United States.

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Table 1: Ranking of Items by Importance to a General Feeling of Happiness, in Israel and the United States

Total Group Social Work Law Social Work Percentage of Students Jerusalem Jerusalem Haif a Responding (N =222) (N = 8 7 ) (N = 6 4 ) (N = 7 1 ) 'Very

Important' Median Rank Median Rank Median Rank Median Rank Rank

Good health 2 . 2 Peace of mind 3 . 0

Family life 3 . 2 Friends 5 . 1 Romantic love 5 . 6

Education 5 . 7 Work 7 . 1 Respect from others 7 . 3

Sex 7 . 7 Money 8 . 7 Religion 10.6

1 2 . 2 1 2 . 2 1 2 . 2 1 97

2 2 . 8 2 3 . 2 2 3 . 0 3 91 3 3 . 3 3 3 . 8 3 2 . 9 2 92 4 5 . 0 4 5 . 2 5 4 . 9 4-5 71

5 6 . 1 6 4 . 2 4 6 . 7 6 33 6 5 . 6 5 6 . 2 6 4 . 9 4-5 69 7 7 .5 8 7 . 1 8 6 . 8 7 60

8 6 . 7 7 8 . 0 9 7 . 2 8 76

10 8 . 9 10 8 . 4 10 8 . 7 10 47 11 1 0 . 4 11 10 .7 11 1 0 . 6 11 58

9 8 . 3 9 6 . 6 7 7 . 3 9 38

1

3 2 5

11 6 7

4 10

9 8

The ranking of the items by the three student groups is very similar, especially for the first three items - good health, peace of mind and family life - and for the last two - money and religion. There is likewise great similarity in the ranking between the students as a whole and the American population, particularly for the first three items. The greatest discrepancy in ranking occurs for romantic love: fifth place among the students and last place, eleventh, in the United States. More than any other, this item probably reflects the age differences between the groups. Romantic love is of particular concern to those in their early twenties, the typical age of students in Israel. Table I1 presents Spearman Rank Correlations for the groups of students with each other and for the total group of students with the United States - once with romantic love included, and once with that item excluded.

The agreement among the three student groups is almost perfect. There is also great similarity between the rankings of the total group of students and the United States (spr. r. = . 7 0 ) ; when romantic love is excluded it too is nearly complete (spr. r. = . 8 7 ) .

The domain which is most preferred, i.e. considered the most important component of a general feeling of happiness is good health. Despite differences in age and socio-economic conditions, all of the groups students and the group in the United States, without exception designated this domain as the most significant. This clearly indicates the great universality of the domain's influence on people's happiness.

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Table 11: Spearman Rank Correlations Between the Groups of Students& Between the Total Student Group and the United States

The Groups Spr. R.

Social Work, Jerusalem - Social Work, Haifa .98 Social Work, Jerusalem - Law, Jerusalem .94 Social Work, Haifa - Law, Jerusalem . 9 3

(romantic love included) .70

(romantic love excluded) .87

All of the Students - United States

All of the Students - United States

Following good health are two more domains which are also preferred by all the groups in both Israel and the United States - peace of mind and family life. There are differences among the groups in the ranking of these two domains: social work in Jerusalem and law in Jerusalem place peace of mind in second place and family life in third, while social work in Haifa and the United States ranked family life second and peace of mind third. However, for the Israeli students as well as the United States differences between second and third place are very small. The difference in medians (for the Israeli groups) is between 3.0 and 3 . 2 , and in percentages (for the United States) between 92 and 91. For both the Israeli and American groups, one could, in fact, regard both domains as closely related in their degree of importance.

It is interesting to note the similar rank which both Jerusalem groups, social work and law, gave to peace of mind. As mentioned above, one of the differences between these two groups is that the Jerusalem social work students were questioned before their mid-term exams, while the law students were questioned after their series of exams. One would assume that students before exams would rank peace of mind higher than would students who had already completed their tests. The similarity in ranking between these two groups indicates that people tend not to be influenced by immediate external circumstances in their determination of preferences, namely considerable consistency in preference determination.

The preference of the three domains mentioned above - good health, family life and peace of mind - is especially salient. They were clearly selected by all of the groups for the first three rankings. Moreover, for all of the groups with the single exception of the law students, there is a very large leap between the medians and percentages for the domains in third and fourth place, a difference which is far greater than those separating the first three preferences.

There is also great similarity in the ranks of the rest of the domains. One should observe the great similarity among the different groups, and, in fact, identical ranks assigned by all he student groups as well as the United States to the domains of education - sixth place - and work - seventh place. Although the students are bettnr educated than the average, have decided to invest considerable effort in further education, and, moreover, are still lacking in work experience, findings show that they express similar preferences for education and work as the United States group. Despite the

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great dissimilarity between the group of students and the group in the United States, there is also great agreement among all of the groups regarding two items at the bottom of the scale, sex and money. All of these findings offer confirmation of universality and stability in the preferece of domains which contribute to a general feeling of happiness.

The determination of priorities by the three Israeli student groups is strikingly uniform. The main differences between Israel and the United States are in regard to romantic love, referred to previously, respect from others (fourth place in the United States and seventh and ninth place in Israel) and religion (eighth place in the United States and eleventh place in all the Israeli groups). We suggest that respect from others and religion are domains which are more influenced by the cultural context than the other domains which are more closely related to basic human needs - psycho-biological needs (health, peace of mind, family life, friends and sex) and instrumental needs (education, work and money). Thus differences in the ranks for these two domains - respect from others and religion - relfect cultural dissimilarities between the Israeli students and the American population. This could possibly be an at least partial explanation f o r the previously mentioned lack of correspondence between people's external circumstances and their subjective feelings towards those circumstances. Maslow (1970) points out that subjective feelings are closely associated with basic human needs which we have seen here to be quite universal and stable, as manifested by the great similarity of preferences for domains connected with those needs. External circumstnaces, on the other hand, embody the potential satisfaction of needs ans as such are more closely related to social and cultural frameworks which are typically characterised by greater variability, i.e. less universality. Accordingly, likeness of needs as opposed to variety in solutions is one of the sources of incongruency between external circumstances and subjective feelings towards those circumstances.

In order to learn about relationships among the domains we ran Spearman Rank Correlations for pairs of the different domains for the total student group. Most of the results are not surprising, lending further validity to the preferences. The highest correlation is a negative relationship between religion and sex, "flesh and spirit" (spr. r . = -.42). Another negative correlation which would also be anticipated for a student population is between education and peace of mind (spr. r. = -.31). A positive correlation was found for romantic love and sex, as expected (spr. r. = .29). The negative correlation between romantic love and respect from others (spr. r. = .31) is somewhat surprising. All of the aforementioned correlations are significant at a level of p .01. The rest of the correlations are either very low or not statistically significant.

DISCUSSION

During recent years we have witnessed the development of research pertaining to subjective indicators, i.e. people's feelings about the external circumstances in which they live. This subjective information completes the picture depicted by objective indicators in describing the welfare of a population; hence, its importance f o r social policy. Two distinct but complementary types of information are required by policy-makers: (1) people's actual feelings regarding a specific domain, and ( 2 ) the extent of preference for that domain and its relative contribution to a feeling of general well-being. This study investigated the priority assigned to a number of different domains which contribute to happiness in particular and to quality of life in general.

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We found that there are domains which are. clearly more salient than the others in their perceived importance for happiness: good health, family life and peace of mind. Despite significant differences among the respondents, both the Israeli and American groups set very similar ranks for these domains as well as for most of the others, thus demonstrating universality and stability in the determination of priorities concerning domains which contribute to a sense of happiness.

There is some indication that universality and stability are higher for those domains related to basic human needs than for domains which are culturally bound. However, it should be pointed out that these culturally-determined domains do not necessarily receive the lowest ranks. Thus, it appears, that the specific ranks assigned to the different domains, and the degree of universality and stability inherent in the determination of these preferences are two dimensions which should be dealt with differentially in the study of preferences.

This study dealt primarily with the ranking of references for different domains, though relationships between the different preferences were also alluded to. In order to achieve greater theoretical understanding and more effective practical utilization of information regarding people's preferences for domains which contribute to happiness, further research should be undertaken concerning the way in which the different domains are related to each other and each's relative contribution to a general feeling of happiness.

REFERENCES

Allardt, E. (1976). Dimensions of Welfare in a Comparative Scandinavian Study, Acta Sociologica, 19, 227-239.

Andrew, F.M. & Whitney, S.B. (19761, Social Indicators of Well-Being, New York: Plenum Press.

Atkinson, T. (1982). The Stability and Validity of Quality of Life Measures, Social Indicators Research, 10, 113-132.

Campbell, A. (19811, The Sense of Well-Being in America, McGraw-Bill.

Campbell, A., Converse, P.E. & Rodgers, W.L. (19761, The Quality of American Life, New York: Russell Sage Foundation.

Donald, C.A. & Ware, J.E. Jr, (19821, The Quantification of Social Contacts and Resources, Santa Monica: Rand.

Kennedy, L.W., Northcott, H. & Kinzel, C. (19781, Subjective Evaluation of Well-Being: Problems and Prospects, Social Indicators Research, 5, 457,474.

Larsen, R.J., Diener, E. & Eomons, R.A. (19851, An Evaluation of Subjective Well-Being Measures, Social Indicators Research, 17, 1-17.

Maslow, A.H. (19701, Motivation and Personality, (2nd edition), Harper & Row.

OECD (19821, The OECD List of Social Indicators, Paris: Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development.

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Szalai, A. & Andrews, F.M. (1980), The Quality of Life, Sage.

UNESCO (19741, Social Indicators: Problems of Definition and of Selection, Paris: UNESCO Press.

United States (1980), Social Indicators 111, Washington D.C.: US Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census.

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