Subjective Indicators Construction by Distance Indices: An Application to Life Satisfaction Data

Sara Casacci () and Adriano Pareto ()
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Sara Casacci: Italian National Institute of Statistics
Adriano Pareto: Italian National Institute of Statistics

Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, 2018, vol. 137, issue 3, No 1, 846 pages

Abstract: Abstract The construction of subjective indicators for measuring phenomena expressed in an ordinal scale is a central issue in social sciences, particularly in sociology and psychology. In this paper, we propose the use of a subjective indicator by groups of units (for example, by geographical area) based on the ‘distance’ between the empirical cumulative distribution and a hypothetical cumulative distribution of reference. This approach allows to avoid the awkward question of the ‘quantification’ of an ordinal variable, i.e., the conversion of an ordinal variable into an interval variable. As an example of application, we consider life satisfaction data coming from the annual multipurpose survey on “Aspects of Daily Life”, carried out by the Italian National Institute of Statistics, and we present a comparison with some classical methods.

Keywords: Ordinal data; Quantification; Subjective indicators (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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DOI: 10.1007/s11205-017-1636-y

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