This book provides an examination of the quantitative and qualitative factors affecting mortality in two major cities of the British Isles: London and Dublin. It covers a scale from individuals mentioned by name to aggregates of mortality data in the Bills of Mortality. Focusing on the Seventeenth Century, the book pays attention to the Great Plague of 1665, and to earlier years in which epidemics decimated populations. To the average person living in the seventeenth century, life was a series of challenges. Mortality among the young was high, and for those who survived early childhood, death in their fifties was fairly typical. Men and women might aspire to a longer life span, but even the healthiest practices were no guarantee when the overall quality of life was low. With fatal illnesses exemplified by typhoid fever on the one hand, and the arrival of yersinia pestis – plague through ports on the Mediterranean at regular intervals of several years, on the other, mortality became a foreseeable event.

The essays in this book are drawn from a conference held in London on the subject of Quality of Life in London and New York papers on a range of important metropolitan concerns were presented by experts from both sides of the Atlantic within universities, government and the private sector. The conference was covered by SCPR (Social and Community Planning Research) and funded by the commonwealth fund of New York. The London essays are collected within this volume. They cover employment and the labour market (Ian Gordon), crime (Mike Hugh and Pat Mayhew), civility and public space (Ken Young), transport (Tony Ridley), housing (Christine Whitehead) and education (Donald Naismith), with introductory and concluding overviews by Howard Davies and A. H. Halsey. Together they cover the key factors that influence the quality of life in London, offering penetrating analyses and possible solutions.

Quality of life is one of the most important issues facing the world today and is central to the development of social policy. This innovative book discusses this crucial topic, assessing the criteria for judging attempts to raise quality of life, including the satisfaction of basic and social needs, autonomy to enjoy life and social connectivity. It considers key topics such as: individual well-being and health-related quality of life human needs - living fulfilling and flourishing lives poverty and social exclusion social solidarity, altruism and trust within communities. Quality of Life is the first systematic presentation of this subject from both individual and collective perspectives. It provides a powerful overview of a concept which is becoming increasingly prominent in the social sciences and is essential reading for students of social policy, sociology and health studies.

The assessment of patient reported outcomes and health-related quality of life continue to be rapidly evolving areas of research and this new edition reflects the development within the field from an emerging subject to one that is an essential part of the assessment of clinical trials and other clinical studies. The analysis and interpretation of quality-of-life assessments relies on a variety of psychometric and statistical methods which are explained in this book in a non-technical way. The result is a practical guide that covers a wide range of methods and emphasizes the use of simple techniques that are illustrated with numerous examples, with extensive chapters covering qualitative and quantitative methods and the impact of guidelines. The material in this new third edition reflects current teaching methods and content widened to address continuing developments in item response theory, computer adaptive testing, analyses with missing data, analysis of ordinal data, systematic reviews and meta-analysis. This book is aimed at everyone involved in quality-of-life research and is applicable to medical and non-medical, statistical and non-statistical readers. It is of particular relevance for clinical and biomedical researchers within both the pharmaceutical industry and clinical practice.

First Published in 2013. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

The rubric "Quality of Life" first came to the explicit attention of the medical profession a little over thirty years ago. Despite the undoubted fact that each one of us has his or her own Quality of Life, be it good or bad, there is still no general agreement about its definition, or the manner in which it should be evaluated. Although much has been written about quality of life, this work has been largely concerned with population-based studies, especially in health policy & health economics. The importance of individual quality of life has been neglected, in part because of a failure to define quality of life itself with sufficient care, in part perhaps because of a belief that it is impossible to develop a meaningful method of measuring individual variables. It is a fundamental belief of the editors of this book that the primary focus of quality of life is & must continue to be the individual, who alone can define it & assess its changing personal significances. The individual perspective is of vital importance not only to patients but to their doctors too, & is more & more frequently proposed as the most meaningful measure of outcome in clinical research, especially in non-remitting or chronic conditions. Workers who wish to consider wider aspects of influences on the illnesses suffered by individuals & the health care that they receive will find much to stimulate them in the methods of documentation proposed in this book. Those mainly concerned with population samples rather than individuals may also find the sensitive methods of investigation proposed here not only to be applicable to their own areas of interest, but also rewarding in perhaps unexpected ways.

This erudite Handbook demonstrates how multiple approaches have been used to conceptualize, measure, and model the complex issue of quality of life (QOL) and individual well-being, emphasizing place and space as critical factors in a meaningful QOL experience among diverse populations including special attention given to older adults.

The aim of the Handbook of Social Indicators and Quality of Life Research is to create an overview of the field of Quality of Life (QOL) studies in the early years of the 21st century that can be updated and improved upon as the field evolves and the century unfolds. Social indicators are statistical time series “...used to monitor the social system, helping to identify changes and to guide intervention to alter the course of social change”. Examples include unemployment rates, crime rates, estimates of life expectancy, health status indices, school enrollment rates, average achievement scores, election voting rates, and measures of subjective well-being such as satisfaction with life-as-a-whole and with specific domains or aspects of life. This book provides a review of the historical development of the field including the history of QOL in medicine and mental health as well as the research related to quality-of-work-life (QWL) programs. It discusses several of QOL main concepts: happiness, positive psychology, and subjective wellbeing. Relations between spirituality and religiousness and QOL are examined as are the effects of educational attainment on QOL and marketing, and the associations with economic growth. The book goes on to investigate methodological approaches and issues that should be considered in measuring and analysing quality of life from a quantitative perspective. The final chapters are dedicated to research on elements of QOL in a broad range of countries and populations.

It has been said that the records of singer and actress Julie London were purchased for their provocative, full-color cover photographs as frequently as they were for the music contained in their grooves. During the 1950s and 1960s, her piercing blue eyes, strawberry-blonde hair, and shapely figure were used to sell the world an image of cool sexuality that stoked the fevered dreams of many men. The contrast between that image and reality, the public and the private, is at the heart of Julie London's story. Through years of research, extensive interviews with family, friends, and musical associates, and access to rarely seen or heard archival material, author Michael Owen reveals the impact that her image had on the direction of her career and how it influenced the choices she made, including the decision to walk away from performing. Go Slow follows Julie London's life and career through its many stages: her transformation from 1940s movie starlet to the coolly defiant singer of the classic torch ballad "Cry Me a River" of the 1950s, and her journey from Las Vegas hotel entertainer during the rock and roll revolution of the 1960s to the no-nonsense nurse of the 1970s hit television series Emergency!