ISQOLS Webinar, "Measuring Social Progress and Quantitative Advances in Quality of Life: The Estes’ Weighted Index of Social Progress"

ISQOLS WEBINAR:

Measuring Social Progress and Quantitative Advances in Quality of Life: The Estes’ Weighted Index of Social Progress

WEDNESDAY

APRIL 5

8:00am PDT/11:00am EDT/5:00pm CEST

Initial conceptual work on the development of the Index of Social Progress (ISP) and the Weighted Index of Social Progress (WISP) began in the early 1970s. The indices focused on the changing capacity of governments to meet at least the basic needs of their rapidly increasing populations. This webinar will focus on the following: 1) the historical context that led the Beyond the GDP/GNP movement; 2) the conceptual foundations that led to the development of the ISP and WISP; 3) the various iterations that resulted in a highly stable measure for assessing levels of well-being and the objective conditions of life using various units of analysis ranging from city states to nations to regions of nations to continents and to the world-as-a-whole; and 4) the varied, always complex, methodological issues associated with missing or incomplete data, statistical weighting of individual social indicators and the ten subindices that form the ISP/WISP. The use of the ISP and WISP for assessing changing levels of social provision for different population groups also will be discussed. Professor Estes will provide participants with an extensive list of publications in which the indices have been applied to various units of analysis. Professor Sirgy will address the current uses to which the indices are shown on Management Institute of Quality-of-Life Studies (MIQOLS) website. The website application is designed to assist scholars and governments use the very rich 50-year time-series database collected for charting national, regional, and global social progress.