Methodical Approaches to Assessment of Life Quality of People: Foreign and Domestic Experience

The article generalises and analyses modern methodical approaches to assessment of life quality of people on the basis of the existing foreign and domestic experience. It shows that, despite the urgency and significance of the problem of assessment of life quality of people and significant interest to this problem in the whole world, many of its aspects are insufficiently studied and methodically supported. The goal of the article is analysis and generalisation of basic international approaches to assessment of life quality, which are used in international and domestic studies, and identification of their positive sides and shortcomings. The article shows that life quality is a synthetic, multilevel, multifactor and multi-component system, that is why study of the life quality should be done from the position of a system analysis and it should be assessed in combination with consideration of interconnections and interdependence of all of its components. It also shows that the existing methodical approaches to assessment of the life quality could be divided into two main groups: approaches, in the basis of which is the external objective assessment (objective approach), and approaches based on the subjective self-assessment of the life quality by people themselves (subjective approach). It shows that a significant shortcoming of both approaches is their one-sided and limited character. It proves that the most expedient for measuring life quality of people is an integral approach, the essence of which lies in combination of both these approaches into one single system. The integral approach could be fruitfully used for assessment of the life quality of people when carrying out studies in many branches of knowledge and spheres of public life.