The aim of this essay is to build a bridge between two intersecting areas of research, social indicators research on the one hand and health-related quality of life research on the other. The first substantive section of the paper introduces key concepts and definitions in the social indicators research tradition, e.g., social indicators,…

The Human Development Index (HDI) implicitly defines "human development" and ranks countries accordingly. To elucidate the HDI's meaning of "human development," the paper examines the sensitivity of the HDI to changes in its components, namely social indicators of education, longevity and standard of living. The HDI is next compared with two…

The conditions under which women academics work provide the impetus for this article. Current trends in feminist and other writing are moving us away from dwelling on the disadvantages women experience in the academy. Yet the findings from the two Canadian studies reported here suggest that issues around children and career, anxieties about…

The goals for this article are consistent with common models of delivering services to students with disabilities in high school and postsecondary educational settings. In the broadest sense the goal is to help teachers and other service providers recognize their roles to ensure that students consider educational opportunities available once they…

Choosing can be easy, such as when deciding what biscuit to eat. Sometimes it is hard to choose, such as deciding on who to have as a boyfriend or girlfriend. Sometimes even choosing a biscuit can be hard if your doctor says it is not healthy for you. There are lots of reasons why we choose to do things. Everyone needs to think about these reasons…

This article relates how Sam Schmidt returned to living a productive life after an accident left him with spinal cord injury. Schmidt was a former Indy Racing League driver who founded Sam Schmidt Motorsports after his accident in 2000. Schmidt's car hit the wall as he exited turn two during a practice session at Walt Disney World Speedway in…

This brief article presents the author's experiences with her three autistic children. She tells of how caring for her autistic children is a tough responsibility, but it has made her see things with new eyes and made her life better. Although her hands may be full, it is full of joy.

This article describes key concepts, reviews empirical findings, and discusses important issues related to the use of subjective importance ratings and importance weighting. The review of empirical findings focuses on weighting achieved via the multiplicative model and on 3 areas in which weighting is commonly used: quality of life, self-esteem,…

Our research has examined three aspects of effective life management in parents of children with disabilities: strategies parents find helpful for effectively managing life; personal qualities that parents consider important to effective life management; and parent transformational outcomes on personal, relational, and perspectival dimensions.…

The civic community perspective focuses on local social and economic institutions that buffer communities from external, often global forces. Important community organizations such as locally oriented business establishments, civic organizations, associations, and churches are emphasized. These critical entities are posited to benefit a…

Using data from adults age 65 and older in the District of Columbia and two adjoining counties in Maryland, we examine the association between community-level structural disadvantage and individuals' subjective assessments of neighborhood problems. In addition, we test whether or not perceptions of relative financial equality or inequality with…

People frequently mispredict the long-term emotional impact of circumstances. The authors examine 2 causes of such mispredictions--a focusing illusion and underappreciation of adaptation. In Experiment 1, the authors found, in 852 adults, that quality of life estimates (for living with disability) were not increased by reducing focusing illusions.…

Background: Numeracy development is widely accepted as critical for adults in the general community which is equally the case for adults with Down syndrome. This paper reports some of the findings of a study including the research question: What is the justification for numeracy development for adults with Down syndrome? Investigating this…

Purpose: This brief report takes a look at the preliminary estimates of the number and proportion of migrants over the age of 60 who moved to and from states between 1995 and 2000 and compares these estimates with those who made the same kind of move one decade earlier. Design and Methods: The 2000 census 1-in-100 public-use microdata sample,…

Quality of Life (QOL) is often measured with surveys of citizen's satisfaction. In contrast, the current research uses already-existing voting data to infer citizens' perceptions of QOL. Under this model, citizens decide how much their QOL has improved (or declined) since the last election, and then vote to reward (or punish) the incumbent party…