How do you measure quality of life?

As cities change, researchers and policy makers try to understand the ways that economic, social, political and environmental factors as well as public policies influence the quality of life (QOL) of a place, and for groups and individuals. Many studies have been undertaken to identify and measure indicators, using quantitative and qualitative data sets, which contribute to QOL. An overview of this field is offered by Massam (2002). Absent in many discussions regarding the well-being of cities, however, is the status of the lived experiences of individuals within a specific place. While improving quality of life is argued to be desirable, the ways in which the concept can be measured is far more complex. For example, how does one quantify individual notions of well-being? The working paper Lived Experiences by Bryan Massam, Brian J. Hracs and Rodrigo Espinoza considers the difficulty of measuring quality of life from the perspective of the life of an individual. It examines the role of responsibility in determining who can alter QOL; for example, a public policy or individual initiatives. The authors suggest ways to collect, display and interpret empirical data about the lived experiences of a sample of individuals in four countries (Canada, Mexico, Poland and Sweden). This data set is used as a test case to elaborate a new methodology on measuring QOL. In their analysis, the authors also identify issues with a number of well-being measurements and then apply their own lived experience survey analysis. This is motivated by the work of Kahneman (2011), who claims that most traditional methods of collecting data with interviews are not entirely satisfactory. In particular, Kahneman suggests that instead of surveying respondents for stated levels of quality of life, a preferred approach uses questionnaires in which individuals identify activities in their recent past that reveal patterns of activities that are a surrogate for experiences and aspirations regarding satisfaction with lived experiences.