Department of Psychology, Keimyung University, Daegu, South Korea.
Department of Psychology, Faculty of Philosophy, University of Novi Sad, Novi Sad, Serbia.
PLoS One. 2019 Oct 9;14(10):e0223221. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0223221. eCollection 2019.
Social scientists have been interested in measuring the prosperity, well-being, and quality of life of nations, which has resulted in a multiplicity of country-level indicators. However, little is known about the factor structure of these indicators. We explored the structure of quality of life, using country-level data on tens of subjective and objective indicators. Applying factor analysis, we identified three distinct factors that exhibited both overlap and complementarity. This structure was replicated in data from previous years and with a partially different set of variables. The first factor, 'socio-economic progress', is dominated by socio-political and economic indicators but also includes life satisfaction, which thus appears to reflect objective living conditions. The second factor, 'psycho-social functioning', consists of subjective indicators, such as eudaimonic well-being and positive affective states. The third, 'negative affectivity', comprises negatively-valenced affective states. The three macro-factors of societal quality of life demonstrated moderate intercorrelations and differential associations with cultural and ecological variables, providing support for their discriminant validity. Finally, country and regional rankings based on the three societal factors revealed a complex picture that cautions against over-reliance on any single indicator such as life satisfaction. The results underline the need for a broadly-based approach to the measurement of societal quality of life, and provide an empirically-derived multidimensional framework for conceptualizing and measuring quality of life and well-being at country level. This study is thus an initial empirical step towards systematizing the multiple approaches to societal quality of life.
社会科学家一直热衷于衡量国家的繁荣、福祉和生活质量，这导致了多种国家级指标的出现。然而，对于这些指标的结构因素知之甚少。我们使用数十个主观和客观指标的国家级数据，探索了生活质量的结构。通过因子分析，我们确定了三个不同的因素，这些因素既具有重叠性，又具有互补性。这种结构在之前年份的数据中得到了复制，并且使用了部分不同的变量集。第一个因素是“社会经济进步”，主要由社会政治和经济指标组成，但也包括生活满意度，这似乎反映了客观的生活条件。第二个因素是“心理社会功能”，由主观指标组成，如幸福和积极的情感状态。第三个因素是“负性情感”，包括负面情感状态。社会生活质量的三个宏观因素表现出中等程度的相互关联，并且与文化和生态变量有不同的关联，这为它们的区别效度提供了支持。最后，基于三个社会因素的国家和地区排名揭示了一个复杂的情况，这提醒人们不要过分依赖生活满意度等单一指标。研究结果强调了需要采用广泛的方法来衡量社会生活质量，并为在国家层面上概念化和衡量生活质量和幸福感提供了一个经验衍生的多维框架。因此，这项研究是朝着系统地研究社会生活质量的多种方法迈出的初步实证步骤。
