Impact of Public Services on Quality-of-Life Indicators

I've been reading Exploring the Impact of Public Services on Quality of Life Indicators (PDF), a research paper from the Centre for Health Economics at the University of York in the UK. The April 2009 paper, authored by Adriana Castelli, Rowena Jacobs, Maria Goddard, and Peter C. Smith, sets out to understand "the degree to which Public Service Organisations (PSOs) can influence a range of aspects of the quality of life of citizens across a broad range of measures both within and outside their usual domains of influence."

They took a set of quality-of-life indicators, and examined them across a number of small geographies and looked for the impact of public policies on these indicators. They found that public policy influenced people's quality of life, that real differences exist at the neighborhood level, and that the impacts of public policies often extended beyond the public service organisation's particular focus.

And they reinforced the importance of building social capital at the neighborhood level.

All in all, a serious study addressing matters important to those of us involved in community indicators work and public policy advocacy. More information about the study follows if you click the "Read More" link ...

From their introduction:

• The fundamental aim of public services is to improve the quality of life of citizens. The main objective of this study was to investigate the influence of public service organisations (PSOs) on aspects of quality of life (broadly measured) of citizens at a local level.
  

• Quality of life is a multi-dimensional concept incorporating facets such as health and social wellbeing,economic well-being, quality of education, level of security and safety, access to transport,and other aspects of life at a local level.
  

• Quality of life and well-being is linked closely to the notion of social capital which broadly concerns networks and shared values and understanding that exist within and between groups. Social capital highlights the importance of many aspects of the social associations that people encounter in their everyday life that may contribute to their well-being and quality of life. Public policy has a current emphasis on the role of social capital and the responsibility of organisations and agencies to work together to address the needs of local communities in terms of creating the conditions that enhance social capital.
  

• Moreover, there has been increasing policy emphasis on the responsibility of PSOs to promote the well-being of their area and this explicitly entails working with other agencies - even where boundaries are not coterminous - in order to develop sustainable community strategies thataddress the full range of quality of life issues.
  

• The increasing emphasis on notions of ‘community’ and ‘neighbourhood’ as levels at which wellbeing, community cohesion and social capital are fostered, implies that it is useful to look beyond the usual regional, local authority or health area level to smaller geographical areas.
  

They analyze a series of quality-of-life indicators across a number of geographies and look for the impacts of public policies on these indicators. Here's what they found:

We draw two sets of conclusions. First, from a methodological perspective, our work provides new evidence on the complex interactions between PSOs and the potential influence they may have on the quality of life of citizens at a local level. This is the first study of its kind to provide evidence on the sources of variation in quality of life indicators at small area level and to use advanced methods to disentangle this variation. We provide insights into whether the three approaches SUR, ML and MVML are suitable methods to examine the complex interplay between different hierarchical levels that are commonplace in all public services.

Second, from a policy perspective we have demonstrated that it is important to consider the influence of PSOs on quality of life in areas that fall outside their traditional domains. Moreover, our results give a flavour of the relative influence that health care and local government organisations may have on measures that span health, education, environment, safety, housing and others. We also illustrated the potential significance of considering the small area level in public policy making. The existence of substantial variation in quality of life measures at this level suggests that PSOs with responsibilities at higher level should be aware of the variation that exists at this level within their area and the differential impact their policies may have locally. As we outlined earlier, government policy highlights the importance of local communities and neighbourhoods and although there are no obvious PSOs that have responsibility for quality of life at small area level, the thrust of policy has been to encourage PSOs to become more responsive to local needs and to devolve to communities a greater role in decision-making, including the handling of resources at neighbourhood group and community level (Dept for Communities and Local Government, 2008). Also, as the literature suggests, fostering social capital can enhance the quality of life of citizens and protect them from social exclusion. Neighbourhood and community networks and relationships appear to play an important role in the creation and maintenance of social capital. Our results therefore suggest that policy attention to the local level may well be a fruitful approach if the aim is to enhance the overall well-being of citizens.

The study includes a list of the indicators they used, and some explanation about why they were chosen. I highly recommend reviewing this material.

I'd be interested in your comments.

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Indicators and the Inaugural Address

Like many of you, I was listening to the Inaugural Address of President Obama. And, I suppose, like many of you I thrilled to hear these words:

"These are the indicators of crisis, subject to data and statistics."

Fifth paragraph. Less than two minutes in, and our new president turns to talk of indicators. He continues by talking about the qualitative nature of the troubles we face, and then into the rest of his speech -- I'll leave that topic for political pundits to pick apart. (You can read the speech for yourself here.)

What I appreciated was the use of data in understanding the nation's issues, and more importantly, a willingness to talk about using data. How cool is that?

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PolicyMap and Mapping Politics

We talked about PolicyMap last month, and so you've probably explored their site and checked to see what data they had on your community.

Now PolicyMap has added something new -- presidential campaign political contributions. It's an interesting data set that's fun to explore for your community -- I found some fascinating patterns for my neighborhood that challenged some of my assumptions.

I like the suggested questions under the Quick Answers section under the maps. This new data set doesn't yet have the questions put in that this data answers -- any ideas?

Here's a note from Tyler Hoffberger explaining more:

PolicyMap.com has now uploaded the latest campaign contribution data (current through May 20). Check it out: www.policymap.com/map

PolicyMap lets you map and research (for free) the concentrations of campaign contributions for Obama and McCain in your community and in any community across the country. Makes for a great visual map to illustrate your point – and can highlight strongholds within key swingstates.

Easy to use: type in any address, zip code, or census tract and then choose a "data layer" to learn about campaign contributions and voter demographics. The campaign contribution data is under the "TRFAnalytics tab" to the right. The site also has loads of data on voter demographics by geography.

What do you think? How can you use this site to help your community indicators efforts?

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Political Leadership and Sustainability

I read an interesting blog post this morning from Joe Swanson, who's apparently a candidate for political office in Wisconsin. I am not in Wisconsin, and do not publicly endorse candidates, and have never met Joe. I'm sharing with you what he wrote because of the clear way in which he outlined the need for community-based indicators of sustainability as a key influence in policy-making and political decisions.

In a post called simply "Sustainable Community", Joe wrote:

If we are to change the outcome of governmental process we must find a way to introduce logical and factual data into each and every decision. The process would need to be governed by criteria/indicator developed locally. This process would remove political consideration from the decision making process. It would evaluate decisions concerning communities by checking each decision against criteria designed by the community to best utilize human and natural resources lessening the burden on infrastructure and environment. This holistic approach would help insure that our communities remain sustainable, therefore insuring the economic, environmental, and human viability of our region.

He then defines "sustainability" for his readership as follows:

Sustainable development is often misinterpreted as focusing solely on environmental issues. In reality, it is a much broader concept as sustainble development policies encompass three general policy areas: economic, environmental and social. In support of this, several United Nations texts, most recently the 2005 World Summit Outcome Document, refer to the “interdependent and mutually reinforcing pillars” of sustainable development as economic development, social development, and environmental protection.

He also identifies fourteen steps in developing community indicators of sustainability. His list demonstrates a thoughtfulness in including a broad set of quality-of-life indicators in understanding trends in the community.

In all, it's a pretty good argument for locally-developed community indicators as necessary resources for public decision-making. Do your elected leadership feel the same way?

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Social Indicators and Public Policy: Call for Papers

Here's a call for papers, courtesy of the ISQOLS listserve. If you're interested in subscribing to the listserve, the information is provided below.

Dear Colleagues,

Today I'd like to draw your attention to the next activity of the ISA - Working Group "Social Indicators", which will be part of the 1st ISA World Forum on "Sociological Research and Public Debate," taking place in Barcelona, September 5-8, 2008. The Working Group "Social Indicators" is organizing a conference track entitled "Are Things Getting Better or Worse, and Why? The Role of Social Indicators to Inform Public Policy."

A call for papers is published at the following website:
http://www.gesis.org/Sozialindikatoren/PDFs/Barcelona-Forum-CFP-WG06.pdf

You'll find more information on the ISA Forum at the ISA-website:
http://www.isa-sociology.org/barcelona_2008/

The deadline for submission of abstracts for our conference track is December 31, 2007.

Looking forward to your applications!

With best wishes,
Heinz-Herbert Noll
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Dr. Heinz-Herbert Noll
Director Social Indicators Department
GESIS-ZUMA
Postfach 122155
D-68072 Mannheim (Germany)
Phone:+49-621-1246-241; Fax: +49-621-1246-182/100
email: heinz-herbert.noll [at] gesis.org
http://www.gesis.org/Sozialindikatoren/
http://www.gesis.org/en/social_monitoring/social_indicators/index.htm
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South Carolina Indicators

Andy Brack reports on South Carolina indicators and says, "A look at statistics about South Carolina can be as discouraging as encouraging."

He begins the article with:

In some areas - - the unemployment rate, child poverty and child deaths - - the state has improved marginally. In other areas, such as overall health care and violent crime, things aren’t better. Two years ago, we offered a look at various statistics to highlight how conventional wisdom about the state - - that it ranks high in things that it should be low in, and low in things it should excel in - - was mostly true.

These numbers are important because politicians could use them as motivation to work on the big problems that impact South Carolinians - - health, education and crime - - instead of fiddling with more marginal, hot-button issues to get elected.


This isn't an in-depth report -- mostly, it's a series of rankings -- but what's interesting about this article is the increasing trend to call for data-based decision making and consistent attention to broad-spectrum trend line monitoring. And that the calls for this kind of attention to indicators comes not from the policy makers but from the community.

Brack concludes his piece by saying, "Bottom line: We can do a lot better, but we need leaders who focus on the big stuff, not specialized issues to help their electability."

Sources for the report can be found here (South Carolina Statehouse Report) and here (South Carolina Indicators Project).

There's an opportunity in these kinds of comments to connect community indicators with policy making in a much more intentional and effective way. Those who are doing well in this area, please pass along your suggestions, either as comments to this post or direct e-mails to me (just click on my profile link) and I'll sum them up in a later post.

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Governing Magazine Discusses Indicators

Jonathan Walters, in Governing Magazine, highlights community indicators and government performance benchmark projects that have been successful in getting the public to take notice and affect public policy.

He says, "[T]here are a growing number of examples where savvy players in public policy are having some significant success in getting key audiences to focus on performance measures," and then he highlights some of the projects which had received innovation awards from the Community Indicators Consortium.

This isn't the first time Governing Magazine has discussed using data, indicators, or performance measures to get results. Ellen Perlman's article on Stat Fever was quick to point out how "the practice of collecting data to monitor and improve government performance continues to gain momentum and evolve." But this article, interestingly enough, highlights non-governmental approaches to measurement that are changing public policy. And there are a number of lessons in the article community indicators practitioners need to pay attention to, in addition to knowing that data is important for quality decision-making in public policy.

1. The presentation of the data must be "clear and concise."
2. The data must "tell a story."
3. The data must be presented in a way that's meaningful for their target audience -- the people who care about that story.
4. Involving the whole community is critical.
5. Never forget the reason for the indicators is to get things done. They quote Donna Sines from Osceola County's Community Vision project: “It’s so much more than looking at evaluation or outcome data,” says Sines. “It’s about bringing the right people in and putting them around that data and then bringing the resources to bear.”
6. "Flesh out the data with personal stories."
7. The messenger is as important as the message. Mary Lou Goeke, with the Santa Cruz County United Way, says, "Who actually delivers the data and the message to policy makers matters a lot."

There's plenty more in the article -- I highly recommend reading it. Then let me know what I left out of the summary -- or what you would add to the article as key tips for moving public policy using data.

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The Role of Data Intermediaries in Policy

I was reading an interesting blog article on "using research for policy and practice." The blog, which is associated with the Improvement and Development Agency (IDeA), begins with this question:

Are you doing enough to learn from research? A common theme from several recent events and meetings I’ve attended is research and using evidence in policy.

The author then makes the case that lots and lots of research is being done, and that information exists which should be informing public policy and practice. However, too often decisions are made without the benefit of that research.

He continues the discussion this way:

[T]here’s also an important role for intermediary bodies – like think tanks, professional bodies, consultants and of course the IDeA – whose job it is to keep on top of current thinking and feed it either directly to authorities or indirectly through new policy. The trick here is knowing which intermediaries to go to for which information. There’s also a role for networks, such as this one, where people can keep each other informed of the best places for information.

The challenge in linking data intermediaries (who gather together the research and data into some sort of comprehensible format) with policy makers (who don't generally have a lot of time that they've made available to read and digest the information themselves) is perhaps a critical one if we expect good policy. Likewise, the role of data intermediaries in gathering the information and making it available and accessible to the public so that people can be engaged and informed about community issues is similarly critical in the functioning of democratic societies, which require an engaged citizenry to ensure policy-making accountability.

So how do we who create community indicator reports and bring together the data do a better job in workinig with decision makers and the public in informing policy and practice? And how do we who do this work engage better in networks and communities of practice to help each other become more effective in this work?

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