``Quality of Life'' Research at the Israel Central Bureau of Statistics: Social Indicators and Social Surveys

``Quality of Life'' research at the Israel Central Bureau of Statistics isheaded by an integrated pair of projects: the series on Social Indicatorsand the Social Survey. The development of these two projects raises issuesof harmonization of measures with other departments in the Israel CBS aswell as with international recommendations. Quality-of-life research necessarily requires collecting information about respondents' evaluationsof their situation, but proposals to include such questions in surveyscarried out by National Statistical Organizations may meet with oppositionwhich argues that the information provided is not ``objective.'' Thequality-of-life research program at the Israel CBS has a dual goal: toprovide baseline information and to be policy relevant.