Multidimensional Analysis of Quality of Life

Northwestern University, Evanston IL

Investigators

Abstract

Abstract Researchers in a wide range of academic and policy-oriented fields have made progress in defining and measuring specific aspects of quality of life (QOL). This research will develop an integrated index that captures multiple dimensions of QOL. Further research in this area is important because indigenous groups around the world are becoming increasingly incorporated into a global economy, with implications for their cultural, psychological, and physical well-being. This project will investigate these issues among the Tsimane' of lowland Bolivia, an Amerindian population of foragers-horticulturalists undergoing substantial cultural and economic transition. The team of researchers will develop a culturally-specific measure of QOL using cultural consensus methods from cognitive anthropology, and will integrate this measure with other commonly applied indicators of quality of life, including economic success, nutritional status, biomarker of psychological stress, into a comprehensive, multi-dimensional, objective measure. In addition the researchers will evaluate the relationship between subjective and objective measures of quality of life. Data will be collected from individuals over 12 years of age in 12 villages (N=600). Data will be collected over a two-year period. The research uses tools from several sub-disciplines in anthropology, including cultural consonance, or success in achieving locally-defined norms for a high-quality lifestyle, economic variables such as income, consumption, and wealth, short and long-term nutritional status, a physiological measure of psychological stress, and a subjective measure of QOL developed for cross- cultural use by the World Health Organization. A common metric will be employed in the construction of a comprehensive, objective measure of QOL, and econometric models will be used to explore the relationships between objective and subjective QOL, and its individual, household, and village-level correlates. The research will contribute a more comprehensive assessment of QOL that can inform scholarly and public debate surrounding the local impact of global processes; will bridge the Cartesian divide between objective and subjective states in anthropology; and will provide the basis for an anthropological contribution that integrates local cultural knowledge into QOL research. The broader impacts of the research include the establishment of a long term field site that will provide training and mentored research experience for students from the U.S. and from Bolivia.