生活品質 (Quality of Life) 之衡量旨在反映人民的生活狀況，不僅可描述社會現況及人民福祉，亦可做為政府制定公共政策，以促進社會發展、增進人民福祉之依據。生活品質之衡量是一歷久彌新的議題，早期各國重視物質層面的基本需求，泰半以經濟指標衡量生活品質；自一九六○年代興起的社會指標運動開始發展健康、教育、環境等社會指標，期盼有助於更多面向地衡量客觀的總體生活品質；後續心理學家則側重以生活滿意度等心理指標，衡量主觀的個人生活品質；晚近大多以涵蓋客觀指標及主觀指標兩個層面，來衡量生活品質。不過，衡量生活品質的指標應包括哪些生活領域、哪些主觀或客觀指標，仍未達成共識；同時計算生活品質綜合指數時，匯總各生活領域及指標的權重如何決定，均值得討論。爰此，本文乃以文獻探討的方法並輔以世界五個國家實際應用之情形，歸納生活品質所涵蓋之領域及衡量指標，並討論衡量指標之權重如何決定，以利後繼研究者及使用者系統性的掌握衡量生活品質之相關問題，並有效的選擇生活品質指標。 The measurement of Quality of Life (QOL) is meant to reflect the people’s living condition; not only does it describe the current social condition and human well-being, but also forms the basis for the government to formulate public policies to enhance social development and improve human well-being. Study on the measurement of QOL has been a long-term issue and is still ongoing. During the early stage of QOL evolution, economic indicators were commonly adopted since most countries focused their attention on the people’s physical needs; followed by to the movement of developing social indicators in the 1960s, other social indicators such as health, education, environment and so on have been included to reflect the people’s living condition in a more broad and objective way of measuring the overall QOL. Later on, psychologists started to focus on life satisfaction and other psychological indicators as ways to measure the subjective QOL at the individual level. Until most recently, both objective and subjective levels of indicators have been included in the measurement of the QOL. However, which life domains and indicators should be included whiling measuring QOL is still an issue. At the same time,, the weighing structure regard to calculate a QOL composite index is worth discussing. This paper discusses life domains, measuring indicators, and weights of indicators based on researches of both literature and the current practices of QOL measurement in Taiwan, Japan, European Union, USA and New Zealand. It was expected this study can provide the subsequent researchers and users a systematic understanding of QOL measurement.
