Conferences

The problem of integrating subjective and objective indicators is essential in scientific and social policy analysis conduct. The scientific importance is an effect of the growing need to find methodological tools for this integration. Moreover, the combination of these two indicative components, and thus meaningful reduction of data, could be fruitful for social policy aims. The main aim of this paper is to present the approach which allows both the scientific and policy purposes to meet at the same time. Furthermore, it should show why trying to answer both types of questions helps to find the solution of the problem of combining the subjective and objective information.

The main thesis of the paper is that the Extended Latent Class Models, as an example of a more general approach to the latent variable modelling, serves as an appropriate tool to provide scientific understanding and recommendations for public policy by an integration of subjective and objective indicators. To make an attempt to prove this thesis, survey data from 2007 is used. This methodological survey (carried out in one region of Southern Poland – Malopolska) captured different dimensions of the people’s evaluation of well-being and their objective situation. Furthermore, it was conducted to collect in one study the most important data gathered regularly by different public institutions (the statistical office and welfare institutions such as labour or public assistance). This approach makes it possible to choose proper indicators on the basis of rather easily available data. The data from this survey is used to analyse the (objective) Laeken Indicators in terms of subjective well-being, that should be considered as an exemplary analysis using the proposed mode of analysis. The results of this analysis provide not only the answer to the main question how to combine subjective and objective indicators, but additional conclusions important to the subject matter. These conclusions include the answers to the following questions: how to conduct methodological surveys for indicators development, how to choose indicators for portfolios used to monitor some phenomena as well as understand the mechanisms that lay behind them. However, in this paper the main emphasis is put on the role of flexible structural models in the process of substantive combining objective and subjective indicators, using the example of the indicators of social exclusion.