Progress towards the desired outcomes within each domain is measured using a set of social indicators
Social indicators are signposts that help us to measure progress towards a desired outcome. Indicators are selected because they either directly measure the outcome of interest (for example the employment rate in the Paid Work domain), or because they are known to be a good predictor of, or are associated with, that outcome (for example, the prevalence of smoking in the Health domain).
The use of social indicators means that we can measure trends over time by reducing the sizeable body of statistical information within an outcome domain to a few key measures. For example, we use five indicators to represent the desired outcomes in the Knowledge and Skills domain. Though the indicators do not in detail describe the state of knowledge and skill acquisition in New Zealand, they identify key trends in this area.
One of the key features of a social indicator is that any change in an indicator can be interpreted as either progress towards, or a movement away from, the desired outcome. This distinguishes social indicators from some social statistics, which do not lend themselves easily to such an interpretation. For example, a change in the average age at which New Zealand women give birth to their first child, while an important social statistic, cannot be said to be necessarily 'good' or 'bad' for social wellbeing.
Indicators have been selected against the following criteria. These criteria were first established in The 2001 Social Report.
- relevant to the social outcome of interest - the indicator should be the most accurate statistic for measuring both the level and extent of change in the social outcome of interest, and it should adequately reflect what it is intended to measure
- based on broad support - ideally there should be wide support for the indicators chosen so they won't be regularly changed
- grounded in research - there should be sound evidence on key influences and factors affecting outcomes
- able to be disaggregated - the data needs to be broken down by age, sex, socio-economic status, ethnicity, and region so we can compare outcomes for different groups
- consistent over time - the usefulness of indicators is related directly to the ability to track trends over time, so indicators should be temporally consistent
- statistically sound - the measurement of indicators needs to be methodologically rigorous
- timely - data needs to be collected and reported regularly and frequently to ensure that indicators are reporting up-to-date information
- allows international comparisons - indicators need to reflect the social goals of New Zealanders but also need to be consistent with those used in international indicator programmes so we can make comparisons.
Inevitably some indicators perform well on some criteria, and poorly against others. Trade-offs are necessary as a consequence. For example, we base most of the economic standard of living indicators on Household Economic Survey data, rather than data from the Income Survey, because it provides a more accurate measure of annual income and is hence a more relevant indicator to the outcome of interest. As a consequence however, we are only able to update these indicators on a three-yearly rather than an annual basis.
In some outcome domains, and in particular Social Connectedness and Cultural Identity, there is relatively poor quality data, and we have had to include lower quality indicators as a consequence. In other outcome domains, such as in health, where there is an abundance of good data, we have had to exclude some good indicators to ensure consistently sized sets of indicators across the domains.
Data limitations mean that the indicators cannot be broken down by key population sub-groups
Ideally, each indicator used in the Social Report would be able to be broken down by sub-populations of interest, such as age, sex, ethnicity, socio-economic status, disability status, and region. In the cases of age, sex and ethnicity (subject to the caveat below), most indicators can be disaggregated. The majority of the indicators rely on data sources that do not allow us to disaggregate by socio-economic status, disability status, and region, because either they do not collect this type of information, or because they are based on sample sizes too small to permit disaggregation. More detailed information on the geographical distribution of wellbeing can be found in The Quality of Life in Big Cities of New Zealand report which uses alternative data sources and indicators to look at quality of life at a regional level.3 The same issue also arises when it comes to breaking down data by small ethnic sub-populations.
Analysis by group highlights differences between group averages. In most cases, however, the differences between members of any one group will be much greater than differences between group averages.
It is worth noting that disaggregation by ethnicity is problematic. Definitions of ethnicity are inconsistent across data sources and change over time. In most instances, the way in which we present the data is constrained by the way in which it has been collected.
There are 43 indicators in this year's Social Report, including new indicators that are based on information about how people view their own lives
This year's Report is an expanded version of the 2003 edition (a full summary of the changes that have been made to this year's Report is provided in Appendix One). A number of new subjective indicators have been included that allow us to get a better sense of the more intangible, non-economic dimensions of wellbeing which can be difficult to discern using traditional social statistics.
Of the 43 indicators included in the Social Report, 17 cannot be updated this year because they are either based on surveys that are not repeated annually, or because new data was not available in time for inclusion in this report. However, there are additional disaggregations in this year's Report for some of the indicators that haven't been updated.
The indicators for The Social Report 2004 are set out below. New indicators are marked by a plus (+) and those that have not been updated are marked with an asterisk (*). Technical details about how the indicators are constructed can be found in Appendix Two.
Table IN2. The 2004 Social Report indicators
| Health | 1. Health expectancy 2. Life expectancy 3. Disability requiring assistance* 4. Suicide 5. Prevalence of cigarette smoking 6. Obesity* (new information on child obesity is provided) |
|---|---|
| Knowledge and Skills | 7. Participation in early childhood
education 8. School leavers with higher qualifications 9. Educational attainment of the adult population 10. Adult literacy skills in English* 11. Participation in tertiary education |
| Paid Work | 12. Unemployment 13. Employment 14. Average hourly earnings+ 15. Workplace injury claims* 16. Satisfaction with work/life balance |
| Economic Standard of Living | 17. Market income per person 18. Income inequality* 19. Population with low incomes* 20. Population with low living standards* 21. Housing affordability* 22. Household crowding* |
| Civil and Political Rights | 23. Voter turnout* 24. Representation of women in government* 25. Perceived discrimination 26. Absence of corruption+ |
| Cultural Identity | 27. Local content on New
Zealand television 28. Māori language speakers* 29. Language retention+ |
| Leisure and Recreation | 30. Satisfaction with leisure+ 31. Participation in sport and active leisure+ 32. Experience of cultural activities* |
| Physical Environment | 33. Air quality 34. Drinking water quality |
| Safety | 35. Child abuse and neglect 36. Criminal victimisation* 37. Perceptions of safety* 38. Road casualties |
| Social Connectedness | 39. Telephone and internet access in the
home* 40. Regular contact with family/friends* 41. Trust in others+ 42. Proportion of the population experiencing loneliness+ 43. Contact between young people and their parents+ |
