Interrelations Among Concepts and Dimensions

aims

There are multiple overlapping relationships among the welfare concepts, goal dimensions, and measurement dimensions. For quality of life, there are three goal dimensions, namely, (1) improvement of objective living conditions, (2) enhancement of subjective well-being and (3) reduction of disparities, equal opportunities and social exclusion of the welfare concept. For social cohesion, there are two goal dimensions. The first is shared with the concept of quality of life, that is, "reduction of disparities, equal opportunities and social exclusion". The second one is "strengthening social connections and ties - social capital" . These two goal dimensions of social cohesion are also shared by the concept of sustainability. The other two of the four goal dimensions of sustainability are, namely, "enhancement or preservation of human capital" and "enhancement or preservation of natural capital".

Likewise, each goal dimension can be measured along different measurement dimensions which may be shared by other goal dimensions. For example, the goal dimension of "improvement of objective living conditions" and that of "strengthening social connections and ties – social capital" can both be measured along the same measurement dimension. As these two goal dimensions are stressed by more than one welfare concept ("quality of life" and "social cohesion" in this case), measurement dimensions derived from these goal dimensions cannot be attributed to a unique welfare concept.

Contextual Change - Social structure

Other than the 3 welfare concepts, the framework does take into account of the impact of a given social structure at any given moment in time on the social well being of a society. In the framework, social structure has 3 broad dimensions, including demographic change, socio-economic development and changes in values and attitudes. They describe and trace the changes of the social structure, which is believed to be influential in the overall goal attainment.

Development Domain

Although the original framework as used in Europe does not specific development domain as a unique construct, the European research team does operationally categorize indicators into different development domains for easy comprehension by the public. The categorization scheme however can vary from country to country. For Hong Kong, we categorize the data into 12 major development domains so that data users will find it more easier to search for data that are specific to their needs.