Constructing summary indices of quality of life: A model for the effect of heterogeneous importance weights
The authors consider how to construct summary indices (e.g., quality-of-life [QOL] indices) for a social unit that will be endorsed by a majority of its citizens. They assume that many social indicators are available to describe the social unit, but individuals disagree about the relative weights to be assigned to each social indicator. The summary index that maximizes agreement among citizens can then be derived, along with conditions under which an index will be endorsed by a majority in the social unit. The authors show that intuition greatly underestimates the extent of agreement among individuals, and it is often possible to construct a QOL index that most citizens agree with (at least in direction). In particular, they show that the equal-weighting strategy is privileged in that it minimizes disagreement among all possible individuals' weights. They demonstrate these propositions by calculating real QOL indices for two surveys of citizens' actual importance weights. © 2007 Sage Publications.
Duke Scholars
Altmetric Attention Stats
Dimensions Citation Stats
Published In
DOI
EISSN
ISSN
Publication Date
Volume
Issue
Start / End Page
Related Subject Headings
- Social Sciences Methods
- 4905 Statistics
- 4410 Sociology
- 1608 Sociology
- 1117 Public Health and Health Services
- 0104 Statistics
Citation
Published In
DOI
EISSN
ISSN
Publication Date
Volume
Issue
Start / End Page
Related Subject Headings
- Social Sciences Methods
- 4905 Statistics
- 4410 Sociology
- 1608 Sociology
- 1117 Public Health and Health Services
- 0104 Statistics