ABSTRACT
This chapter is concerned with both improving the indicators and assessing the process by which they are used or ignored. The social indicator movement received important impetus during the 1960s when social scientists and government officials produced Toward a Social Report, the first comprehensive federal report on social indicators. Research is also needed on the policy formation process, which establishes goals and either uses or fails to use the indicators to produce policy. Research is needed on how important well-being indicators vary for people on different local jurisdictional levels. In general, social researchers have worked more on problems of well-being and their causes than on policy implementation. Sources, costs, results, and tradeoffs of the alternative strategies ought to be better documented, as should their effects on various local institutional structures and well-being indicators. Conditions are potentially disastrous for several population segments on well-being indicators.
