With a focus on the United States, this paper addresses the basic social indicators question: How are we doing? More specifically, with respect to children, how are our kids (including adolescents and youths) doing? These questions can be addressed by comparisons: (1) to "past historical values", (2) to "other contemporaneous units" (e.g.,…

This paper first reviews the goals of the founding documents of the social indicators and quality-of-life movements of the 1960s and 1970s. It next describes the current state of knowledge with respect to the founding goals of this field. The focus then turns to the topic of measuring changes in child and youth well-being in the United States over…

The question of whether boys or girls (and young males and females) have been doing better in terms of their well-being in the United States has been a point of sometimes rancorous debate among feminist and other scholars in recent decades. But suprisingly little systematic empirical inquiry has been devoted to this question. The present study…

Gives brief sketch of development of "social indicators movement" during past decade, elucidates some conceptual and theoretical issues surrounding the social indicators notion, and places these issues within context of measurement and construction of theories of social change, also illustrating some ways which social indicators relate to social…

Examines the definition, construction, and interpretation of social indicators. Shows how standard classes of formalisms used to construct models in contemporary sociology are derived from the general theory of models. Reviews recent model building and evaluation related to active life expectancy among the elderly, fertility rates, and indicators…