225 10 Quality of life Steffen Mau and Roland Verwiebe, with Patrick Präg DEFINITION In the social sciences, quality of life is a concept that goes beyond people’s mere material standard of living. It treats their standard of living as one indicator alongside other, non-economic ones, such as health, housing, environmental quality and leisure time. Empirically, quality of life is measured in terms of not only objective conditions, but also subjective assessments. Quality of life has become a popular concept not only in sociology, but also in disciplines like
FIVe Quality of life Philosophers going back to Aristotle have struggled to articulate the meaning of ‘the good life’, and since the Garden of eden scholars have conjured up visions of ‘utopia’. The popular media seems obsessed with how the human existence can be enhanced, be it humorous depictions of assorted attempts to cheer up residents in Britain’s officially most miserable town (the BBC television series Making Slough Happy) or earnest magazine columns on the ‘science of happiness’. The term ‘quality of life’ (QoL) is often at the heart of such
41 THREE QUALITY OF LIFE DESIGN GOALS The homes and neighborhoods where adults with autism live may significantly affect the quality of their lives. Yet most housing providers, developers, architects and sometimes even family members are unaware of how specific residential features and neighborhood amenities can affect the comfort, pleasure and well-being of those on the spectrum. Designers and housing providers need to know how best to foster and create autism-friendly environments and how residents can be supported to not only live but thrive in their
authority adult social services ( National Audit Office, 2018 ). Furthermore, the evidence of the effectiveness of carer-specific interventions to improve carers’ quality of life (QoL) is relatively weak due to methodological constraints, specifically, in terms of suitable outcome measures ( Pickard, 2004 ). Studies tend to use carer-specific or generic measures to capture burden/strain, health-related QoL or psychological outcomes; however, these may not be sensitive to the effect of social care interventions. The development of the Adult Social Care Outcomes Toolkit for
177 8 Health, wellbeing and quality of life Angela Curl and Julie Clark Introduction Following years of disconnect in UK public policy (Royal Town Planning Institute (RTPI) 2013), there is growing recognition of the importance of transport for health and wellbeing. Indeed, the explosion of interest in the health potential of active travel among health and transport researchers, policy makers and advocacy groups makes this an exciting time to study interactions between transport and health. To a large extent, the focus on active travel and the health
Key messages Green public spaces contribute considerably to quality of life beyond health and social inclusion. The practice ‘going to the park’ as a form of consumption is a satisfier for ‘Protected Needs’. Public policies aiming at wellbeing in cities must be attentive to the practice ‘going to the park’. Human needs are deep meanings that have been neglected due to the normalisation of desires. Introduction: a quality of life approach to the consumption of green public spaces Cities, as important working and cultural hubs, account for a
171 EIGHT Sustaining quality of life At the start of a new century, two issues have challenged public policy, and especially the economic model on which government had come to be based after the momentous geo-political events of 1989. The first was the failure of self-assessed well-being to rise in line with incomes per head in the affluent economies (Kahneman et al, 1999; Frey and Stutzer, 2002; Helliwell, 2003; van Praag and Ferrer-i-Carbonell, 2004; Layard, 2005; Jordan, 2008). The second was the evidence of accelerated global warming, and the
189 Quality of life and social inequality in old age THIRTEEN Quality of life and social inequality in old age Andreas Motel-Klingebiel Key points • Quality of life is a core outcome of unequally distributed access to social assets and/ or social positions that results in restricted or favoured life chances. • The life domains relevant to overall quality of life vary considerably between age groups, with shifts from the outside world to inner life with increasing age. • Quality of life is significantly lower but more divergent among older people. • The results
249 EIGHTEEN Securing the dignity and quality of life of older citizens Hilary Land Policy proposals published in England during 2005 emphasise the importance of ensuring that older people and adults needing care achieve ‘independence’ and are given ‘choices’ consistent with their own well-being. Indeed, the Green Paper on social care is entitled Independence, well-being and choice: Our vision for the future of social care for adults in England (DH, 2005). This chapter will first explore how far the interpretation of the complex and fluid concepts of
