Overall Quality of Life Measurement: Problems and Prospects in the Case of People with Disabilities

Abstract

There are important practical and normative reasons for using quality of life measurement to evaluate programs and policies for people with disabilities. The quality of life framework has proved to be useful because it is flexible and general. It is flexible because it can take account of different kinds of information, tailored to the situation of particular target groups or even particular individuals. It is general because quality of life indices can assist decision-making on many different levels - from the individual to the national. This flexibility and generality ensures that it can be adapted to many sorts of applications where promoting people's welfare is a concern.