This report is one of the outputs associated with a National Research Foundation (NRF) sponsored study entitled Quality of Life in South Africa and Algeria: A Multi Method Approach, which is being led by Professor Valerie Moller of the Institute of Social and Economic Research at Rhodes University and Professor Habib Tiliouine of the Department of Psychology and Educational Sciences at the University of Oran, Algeria. It represents a joint research grant under the South African / Algeria Research Partnership Programme Bilateral Agreement. Quality of Life (QOL) is an important outcome variable that is commonly used in cross-country comparisons at a societal level, but also to evaluate and compare individual well-being. Many different approaches to measuring Quality of Life exist, some of which consist of a single-item rating scale, while others comprise ratings of a list of life domains. Although the same measures for Quality of Life are being used world-wide, it seems questionable whether 'Quality of Life' has the same meaning everywhere. The overarching objective of the study is to compare the relative importance assigned to different domains in constituting the quality of life of people from different cultural backgrounds in Algeria and South Africa. For the survey component of study, a module of questions was developed that included the following quality of life measures: the Personal Well-Being Index and National Well-being Index (International Wellbeing Group, 2006, Tiliouine 2009b, 2009c), the lesser known but promising Anamnestic Comparative Self-Assessment (ACSA) (Bernheim, Theuns, Mazaheri, Hofmans, Flieghe, and Rose, 2006; Moller, Theuns, Erstad Moller, 2007), the Cantril 'Ladder of Life' Scale that was developed in the mid-1960s, as well as single-item satisfaction-with-life-as-a-whole and global happiness measures. For the South African research component, the module was included as part of the 10th annual round of the South African Social Attitudes Survey (SASAS), which has been administered by the Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC) since 2003. SASAS is a nationally representative sample survey of approximately adults aged 16 and older that investigates public's attitudes, beliefs, behaviour patterns and values in the country. The long term aim of this survey programme is to construct an empirical evidence base that will enable analysts to track and explain the attitudes, beliefs and behaviour patterns of the country's diverse populations. The administration of the Algerian general population Survey will be conducted by the research team of Laboratory of Educational Processes & Social Context (Labo-PECS), University of Oran. This unit has already completed five similar surveys across the three main regions of the country: North, Hauts-Plateaux and South (Sahara). This tabulation report provides frequencies of all the closed questions asked in the quality of life module as well as cross tabulations of all the questions by age group, sex, population group, educational attainment, living standard measure, province and geographic subtype.
Human Sciences Research Council (Wed,) studied this question.