Studio della qualità della vita in diverse culture nel campo delle disabilità cognitive.

Different cultures experience happiness differently. Traditionally, the West is considered materialistic, and happiness is said to come from achievement and acquisition. The East is said to be more people-oriented, where happiness is a result of deep personal interactions. Thus, poor people can be happier in the East than the West, because they are not so concerned with possession and more with society. This book considers happiness and quality of life in non-Western countries and cultures. Its coverage is diverse and spans the breadth of the non-Western world, revealing unique perspectives of happiness and life quality embedded in rich cultural traditions and histories.

The EUROHIS project has focused on the comparability of health surveys and has uncovered some problems that arise when aiming to compare data from different countries. Similar problems of cross-cultural comparability also arise when comparing data from other sources, such as health registers, and are just as complex and difficult to tackle. One of the main advantages of health surveys, however, is the relatively low cost and time involved in adapting them according to the needs of health policy-makers. This work shows that the output from the EUROHIS project provides common instruments for the measurement of eight health indicators. The development of these instruments has required careful consideration of relevant common concepts and how these should be defined and operationalized. The instruments are freely available for use by all countries, with the aim of enhancing national health information systems and facilitating cross-national comparisons of health data.

The aim of this encyclopedia is to provide a comprehensive reference work on scientific and other scholarly research on the quality of life, including health-related quality of life research or also called patient-reported outcomes research. Since the 1960s two overlapping but fairly distinct research communities and traditions have developed concerning ideas about the quality of life, individually and collectively, one with a fairly narrow focus on health-related issues and one with a quite broad focus. In many ways, the central issues of these fields have roots extending to the observations and speculations of ancient philosophers, creating a continuous exploration by diverse explorers in diverse historic and cultural circumstances over several centuries of the qualities of human existence. What we have not had so far is a single, multidimensional reference work connecting the most salient and important contributions to the relevant fields. Entries are organized alphabetically and cover basic concepts, relatively well established facts, lawlike and causal relations, theories, methods, standardized tests, biographic entries on significant figures, organizational profiles, indicators and indexes of qualities of individuals and of communities of diverse sizes, including rural areas, towns, cities, counties, provinces, states, regions, countries and groups of countries.

The second edition of this popular book reflects many of the changes in the field of IDD in the first 15 years of this century, including an increased understanding of the quality-of-life (QOL) concept and the influence it has had on the field. This edition represents the work of 34 contributors, representing 14 countries, who capture the significant role the QOL concept has played in personal involvement and empowerment, self-advocacy, family-related QOL, supports planning, outcomes evaluation, continuous quality improvement, organization transformation, and systems-level change. The sample of cultures in this edition represents a somewhat different sample than that found in the first edition and is amplified by an extensive reference list that presents a broader, more complete view of international QOL work. Chapters from the developing world are included, recognizing the significant challenges faced by many countries. The contributors to this edition include those whose work is familiar and widely published, as well as self-advocates who speak from their own experiences and insights. The chapters in this edition are grouped into the following sections: the culture of QOL, QOL at the microsystem level, QOL at the mesosystem level, QOL at the macrosystem level, and the cross-cultural QOL agenda.

The first comprehensive and statistically significant analysis of the predictive powers of each cross-cultural model, based on nation-level variables from a range of large-scale database sources such as the World Values Survey, the Pew Research Center, the World Bank, the World Health Organization, the UN Statistics Division, UNDP, the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, TIMSS, OECD PISA. Tables with scores for all culture-level dimensions in all major cross-cultural analyses (involving 20 countries or more) that have been published so far in academic journals or books. The book will be an invaluable resource to masters and PhD students taking advanced courses in cross-cultural research and analysis in Management, Psychology, Sociology, Anthropology, and related programs. It will also be a must-have reference for academics studying cross-cultural dimensions and differences across the social and behavioral sciences.

A fascinating and worthy text that presents new insights into a hugely important area of mental health. Health-related quality of life (HRQL) impairment is a core domain of prevalent mental disorders such as schizophrenia, schizoaffective, mood and anxiety disorders. The authors present a new conceptual framework for this field by explaining how HRQL impairment arises from interactions between various multidimensional factors. They suggest several ways in which further research could enhance our understanding of HRQL impairment, its biological basis, and its relevance to psychopathology.