Shek Daniel T L, Wu Florence K Y
Department of Applied Social Sciences, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Kowloon, Hong Kong.
Soc Indic Res. 2018;135(3):975-990. doi: 10.1007/s11205-017-1552-1. Epub 2017 Jan 11.
This paper is a response to the article entitled "Fifty years after the Social Indicators Movement: Has the promise been fulfilled?" by Ken Land and Alex Michalos (2015) which constitutes a careful review of the historical development of the Social Indicators Movement, utility of social indicators in shaping the concept of quality of life and subjective well-being, and issues deserving social indicators research in future. In this response paper, we join in the discussion by highlighting five issues-progress, paradigms, puzzles, promise, and potential research directions of social indicators research. In terms of progress, while we have accomplished many tasks proposed by Solomon et al. (The quality of life, Sage, London 1980), some of them are yet to be achieved. Regarding research paradigms surrounding social indicators, researchers have primarily used positivistic or post-positivistic orientation to conduct and interpret social indicators research, with relatively fewer studies using interpretive, constructionist or critical theory perspective. There are also several puzzles deserving consideration. These include (a) the use of "other types of evidence", particularly qualitative data; (b) evaluation of social programs; (c) feasibility of assessing "social progress"; (d) choice of social indicators; (e) interpretation of findings; (f) methodological debates; and (g) explanations for social change. Finally, the promise of social indicators research to promote quality of life and potential future research directions of social indicators research are discussed.
本文是对肯·兰德和亚历克斯·米哈利斯（2015年）发表的题为《社会指标运动五十年后：承诺是否实现？》一文的回应。该文对社会指标运动的历史发展、社会指标在塑造生活质量和主观幸福感概念方面的效用，以及未来值得进行社会指标研究的问题进行了细致回顾。在这篇回应文章中，我们通过突出社会指标研究的五个问题——进展、范式、谜题、前景及潜在研究方向，加入到讨论中来。在进展方面，虽然我们已经完成了所罗门等人（《生活质量》，塞奇出版社，伦敦，1980年）提出的许多任务，但其中一些仍未实现。关于围绕社会指标的研究范式，研究人员主要采用实证主义或后实证主义取向来开展和解释社会指标研究，而使用诠释、建构主义或批判理论视角的研究相对较少。还有几个谜题值得考虑。这些包括：（a）“其他类型证据”的使用，特别是定性数据；（b）社会项目的评估；（c）评估“社会进步”的可行性；（d）社会指标的选择；（e）研究结果的解释；（f）方法学辩论；以及（g）对社会变革的解释。最后，讨论了社会指标研究对提升生活质量的前景以及社会指标研究未来可能的研究方向。
