Quality of Life Trends Study

The South African Quality of Life Trends Study
This flagship project provides the framework that underpins all other themes under investigation in ISER’s Quality of Life Studies programme. The longitudinal project was launched in the early 1980s to assess trends in how ordinary South Africans perceive their quality of life. A set of some 35 subjective indicators were developed in a project initially sponsored by the Human Sciences Research Council. The full set of indicators was applied three times over the past two decades. The project has developed longer trendlines for two global indicators from this set, satisfaction with life-as-a-whole and happiness.

The trendline on life satisfaction was extended to 2007 based on a survey commissioned to MarkData (see project on Religious Movements in South Africa).

Lessons learnt: The methodology of the QOL trends study and lessons learnt from the project are reported in a chapter in a book that appeared in 2007: Wellbeing in Developing Countries by Ian Gough and J. Allister McGregor, Cambridge University Press.

Monitoring Quality of Life in South Africa: A special issue on ‘Quality of Life in South Africa Ten Years into Democracy’ was published in the Social Indicators Research as Volume 81, Number 2, in April 2007. The issue was prepared in advance of the International Society for Quality-of-Life Studies conference hosted by ISER at Rhodes University in July 2006. The thirteen papers in the book were available online at the time of the conference. Møller’s paper reported greater life satisfaction among South African householders who benefited from service delivery.

Monitoring Quality of Life in Grahamstown/Rhini and the Eastern Cape
A number of projects conducted for the Programme have a local focus. Research on youth development, living conditions, and attitudes to Tuberculosis have been conducted in Grahamstown/Rhini. A survey on criminal victimisation in the Nelson Mandela metro. Findings are communicated in the ISER Research Reports series and in journal articles, many of which can be accessed online through the Rhodes Repository.

Publications

Introduction to the South African Quality of Life Trends Survey

Møller, V. 2007. Researching quality of life in a developing country: Lessons from the South Africa case. In: Gough, I. and McGregor, J.A. (eds.) Wellbeing in Developing Countries: From theory to research. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Pp. 242-258.

Møller, V. 2004. Quality of Life in a Divided Society. In: Glatzer, W, von Below, S and Stoffregen, M (eds.) Challenges for Quality of Life in the Contemporary World. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers (now Springer). Pp. 297-310.

Other Recent Publications on Monitoring South African Quality-of-Life Trends

Møller , V. 2007. Quality of life in South Africa: The first ten years of democracy. Social Indicators Research 81(2): 181-201.

Møller , V. 2007. Guest editor. Quality of Life in South Africa – Ten Years into Democracy, Social Indicators Research 81(2).

Møller , V. 2007. Satisfied and dissatisfied South Africans: Results from the General Household Survey in international comparison. Social Indicators Research 81(2): 389-415.

Møller , V. 2007. South Africa coming to terms with difference. In: Molt, P. and Dickow, H. (eds.) Comparing Cultures and Conflicts, Festschrift for Theodor Hanf. Baden-Baden: Nomos. Pp. 461-475.

Møller, V. (ed.). 1997. Quality of Life in South Africa. Social Indicators Research Series No. 1, Dordrecht: Kluwer Publishing House. (now Springer) Pp. 304.

Møller, V. 1997. Editorial: South Africa’s emergent “social indicators movement”, Social Indicators Research 41 (1-3):1-14.

Schlemmer, L. & Møller, V. 1997. The shape of South African society and its challenges, Social Indicators Research 41 (1-3): 15-50.