I would include to this list, engagement in social, institutional and individual networks, formal as well as informal. Network engagement has been positively correlated to social capital. Please refer to link below:

Chapter SOCIAL CAPITAL AND THE NETWORK EFFECT: IMPLICATIONS OF CHINA...

Mykhailo Illich Fyk,

Thanks for the answer. I want to know, how decorative plants can become a parameter. I think study on socio-economic transformation includes temporal analysis. I can collect data on hobbies of people. But how can I collect such data for past days. I shall be highly obliged, if you would explain it for me. 

Alexander G. Flor,

I have been enriched by reading the paper enclosed to your answer. Thank you.

Very  usuful source of data will be data from Time use survey. This survey collect data for all members of rhe household for their 24h hours activities ...by gender, age, region, education, evonomic ectivities, cultural, social...activities...with cross tabulation you couuld teceive very interesting information.

Sarada,  I am also concerned with what means are available for collecting the data needed for the temporal analysis of transformations in communities.  Of course, the most sure way, but also the most intrusive and costly, are questionnaires and periodic household surveys across a constant sample set but that is most often impractical.  There is also the problem that in following households you are also following transformations related to changing stages in the lives of their members as they age.  The use of a basket of independent variables such as some in Mykhailo's list may also turn out to be not so independent as you might expect.... The more large pets I own I am quite sure will be negatively correlated with the number of decorative plants and 'objets d'art',  similarly with children perhaps!  :-))

I would think that consideration of  the 'list' approach combined with a group of dummy variables to specifically classify each data point into a particular cohort of the community according to a conceptual matrix which locate them in society at that time would be useful.  Collecting randomised sample data to construct a time-series would then allow you to examine the 'cohort lifestyle surface profile' of the community as it changes over time.  At the very least it would create a pretty video!!  It might also allow you to dig into extra-household effects such as 'antecedent and extended family' parameters related to education, occupation, networks and so on....  including hobbies, pet keeping and flower arranging, cricket playing and devotion.

This is not as flippant as it sounds.  The point being that there is a self-perpetuation element in the conveyance of social class within families and across generations and most interestingly in this regard is the proposition that since 'social influence or power' is correlated to class it is to be expected that this attribute will tend to be employed by parents in the promotion of the futures of their children and extended families.

Consequently, in any age-based cohort it might be expected that the profile of the subset scoring high on antecedent influence will change differently to that of the age cohort to which they belong, and so on.  Their social mobility may be less than overall, just as a subset with the lowest antecedent influence score will, while perhaps mid-value subsets might show more mobility.

This sort of analytical model would yield a great deal of insight into social dynamics, structure and vulnerabilities. At the same time it would facilitate policy impact assessment like nothing else could.

Best regards,  Robin

 Thank you very much Robin Edward Jarvis for your elaborate answer.  Would you please explain and give examples for the cohort  lifestyle surface profile, and what will be a proper conceptual matrix for study on aged people?  Regards .   Sarada

Thank you Blagica  Novkovska, for your beautiful suggestion.        Sarada

Mykhailo....!!!  :-))   Haha!

Sarada.  My instinct is that such studies must be careful to limit themselves to specific communities.  So many of the parameters which can be selected will necessarily by 'artefacts' of a regional culture and must be identified with some appreciation by the researcher of what that might be.   A surface profile requires data points with 3 dimensions so that a 'surface chart' can be generated.  Each chart would at the submatrix level.  For instance , with time as your 'x'-axis and a cohort of households with one breadwinner and age between 30 and 35 years assign a cardinal integer value as a 'label dimension' to each component of a 'well-being' score  in which the absolute 'observation' value of each element has been normalised to lie within the same range of values, say -10 to +10, by referencing them as a proportionality of their corresponding 'population mean' as it was when measured at the start of the study period.  This will generate a landscape which grows in time to the right as data points are collected.  The landscape will be formed by stripes, running left to right and 'stacked' along the 'y'-axis back into the page (so to speak), of normalised data points for each score component.  The origin would be the '0' value on the vertical axis at each intercept with the 'y'-axis for each score element and the first period x= t-zero would look something like this series for score element '2' having a normalised value of +3.2:  (x, y, z) = (0, 2, 3.2) .  Does this help?

best regards, Robin

BTW.  A proper conceptual matrix for 'old people'?  That's a tough one I don't have much experience .... being only 67 yrs myself!!  But as I said... its all a matter of cultural context.  :-))

Sarada,

I would like to add a few points to this constructive exchange. We looked at the evolution of household structure in a panel survey in stress terms (as this was a basis for the mechanics of continuing the study). This can serve as a correlate of wellbeing but not for subregions.

I like the idea of a social landscape - more interesting perhaps than social capital, as it acknowledges the dynamics better - do you build a single index (using data already available) or a portfolio of measures; . do you track one unit over time, or build from an omnibus surveys of a repeated representative sample; or use available transactional data 'floods' as proxies.

What may assist is a framework, not unlike that above expressed as a 'mesh' but built on some preconceived notion of wellbeing pillars - for instance as in the SF36 used for mental health, or the very robust simple life satisfaction questions.

Capturing the dynamics can be approached rather by looking at suboptimal conditions/ states - as i the vulnerability indexes for child welfare which work statistically (without entering explciit behavioural/ experiential terrain. A precedent for this analysis is in basic needs (poverty) measures.

A promising opening seems to me to be in data generation at community level directly - rather than breaking down general frameworks to small areas. 

Have you looked at the (Canadian) Wellbeing Index? There are quite a few around, but none entirely convincing. This is a fair example. Weights remains a stumbling block, pace Mr Jarvis.I would like to concentrate on systematic collection of these new continuous transactional style sources together with linkages to repeated traditional surveys which can anchor concepts to directed study. The first gives you coverage and 'breadth'; the second 'depth'. A bit like the stripes mentioned above. 

Stephen,

My own focus is upon developing governance structures at the higher levels of community out of the mandates of the lowest levels, so as to systemically support and empower the maintaining the aims and goals of governance, at all levels, upon the 'proper' mandate of developing and sustaining universal individual well-being across 'institutional landscapes' in which the socio-economic initiatives of policy are always deterministically responsible and accountable to the subjects of that governance.

This necessarily requires the development of systemic approaches to the direct generation of data at the community level, just as you would like to see.   In fact at that granularity one might need to consider 'community' to be a 'domain concept'. This allows one to envision how individuals are invariably members of several 'communities' at any moment in time.  These 'community domains' although having different 'basal characteristics (such as being geographic or occupational or purposed) may have the potential of describing a universally applicable analytical framework which enables us to conceptually appreciate how these individual, overlapping and thickly layered 'flakes' of relationship which are our 'communities' are that of which the 'global community' is in fact comprised.

I feel that this might provide a framework which would enable analysis to 'chop an dice' datasets at the smallest scale while keeping consistency as one scales up to look at larger and larger 'flakes' ... even as one combines domains of differing basal characteristics to create custom 'flakes' according to a useful profile of basal characteristics to facilitate covariance studies and so forth.

It is a tantalising objective!

Best regards... to you too Sarada,

Robin

 Robin Edward Jarvis,

I am lucky to be acquainted with a good teacher like you. 

Mykhailo Illich Fyk and Stephen Robert Horn,  thank you for your explanations. 

I am enriched by this discussion. My regards to you all.

Your welcome indeed!  Having turned my back on a research fellowship upon graduating in 1975 I have worked in ICT until I retired.  This field has been my 'passionate hobby'.  Now I may complete 'my project'.  Best regards, Robin

To

All respondents

Kindly give me an idea of the methodology that , how can I prepare a matrix of parameters.  Regards. 

Hello Sarada,

Here is the URL of an RG article just uploaded by Thomas Pugh which seems to be necessary reading for the type of modelling we are discussing here.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/292945377_Issues_in_the_Estimation_of_Dynamic_Happiness_Models_A_Comment_on_Does_Childhood_Predict_Adult_Life_Satisfaction

Article Issues in the Estimation of Dynamic Happiness Models: A Comm...

Disposable income, employment opportunities, health and well-being, social and cultural maintenance are additional parameters for socio-economic impact.