Quality of life (QOL) studies are abundant within the research and popular literature. Rankings are produced on national, state/province, city and municipal levels. Yet, there is not a widely supported simple index that is applicable to the city level. Using lessons derived from the Human Development Index and a review of the recent QOL literature, an index is developed for city-level comparisons and applied to 30 cities across Canada and the New England states. The QOL index is composed of the dimensions of Economy, Safety, Social Environment, and Education and uses the indicators of average income, crime rate, divorce rate, and educational attainment. Two alternate indices are developed and applied to measure the sensitivity of the index formulation based on the addition of the dimensions of Health (QOL2) and Housing (QOL3). The study indicates that city rankings are not dependent upon population size and that high-ranking cities consistently rank within the top levels of each of the developed indices. Statistical analysis (p<0.001) indicates that there is significant rank correlation between the two additional enlarged indices, QOL2 and QOL3, and the original more simple QOL index suggested in this study, thereby supporting the implementation of a simple, transparent and well-supported index.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:UNB.1882/177 |
| Date | January 2005 |
| Creators | Lanteigne, Cynthia Anne |
| Contributors | Wielemaker, M. W. |
| Source Sets | Library and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis or Dissertation |
| Format | 655750 bytes, 332869 bytes, 826124 bytes, application/pdf, text/html |
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