For someone that is a professed acedemic, this proposal is particulariy dense.

For a KPI to be considered it has to:

Be easily measured,
Be repeatable
Be relevant

levels of depression fail all three, as it is highly personal (unlikely to deliver an accurate response), highly subjective, extremely dependent on other factors such as medical background, sleep, environment, etc.

I am depressed that spineless wonder Rudd is in charge of anything, labor continues to squander my money on jobs for pals, and that the coalition is so hopeless.

(in response to "Shadow Minister" who said "For a KPI to be considered it has to: Be easily measured, Be repeatable, Be relevant")

Given that one of the indicators is considered useful enough for epidemiological studies, integrates with existing national and international health databases (WHO ICD), it is certainly easily measured and repeatable... and with appropriate subject selection is certainly good enough for both scientific papers and actuarial calculations. Cross with census data, and you can do what you like.

Note that ICD (and ICHI, the WHO International Classification of Health Interventions) form a large part of reports sent to governments already... allowing some cross checking of data the ABS might collect with that already reported by health regions and hospitals.

Yes, you do need to make sure your sample is big enough and representative - something that is uncontroversial for obesity rates, voting intentions or under-employment figures (which do involve self-assessment).

So the question remaining is "relevance", something dependent on one's idea of what the function of a state actually is. If you have a different idea of the purpose of the state, or another single outcome indicator that is the sum total of all impacts on an individual, I'm happy to hear of it.

And by the way, there is a big difference between "academic background in biomedical sciences" and "background as an academic"

Balneus,

The statistics are kept mainly for those suffering from clinical depression, brought on by a imbalance of neurotransmitters or other medical conditions such as post natal depression.

The "depression" you would try to measure would be those brought on by the general environment, which I suspect would not be reported by the GP unless it became a serious impediment to the person functioning.

Similarily, my wife had a bout of depression for which she received short term treatment after losing 2 of her close family in a couple of months. I would anticipate that her case and many others would have very little relevance, and if reported would not include the personal details required to differentiate.

With respect to the semantics around the word acedemic, you don't portray yourself as a high school drop out, rather as someone involved in acedemia, and as such should be able to recognise data that correlates with the cause and is not simply "background noise". Many "acedemics" that comment on topical issues have backgrounds significantly different from the topic.

Some time ago I contributed to a thread I think the article was written by Fred Arjay (? Spelling)), which was extolling the merits socialist interference in peoples private lives and the theoretical benefits of economic “equalisation”, through the application of regressive taxation

I did some research and identified a correlation between the levels of “life satisfaction” and the levels of taxation (as % of GDP) for differing national populations.

I would suggest “depression” could rate as the inverse of “life satisfaction”.

If we can accept such a notion, then I suggest you all vote for a libertarian system of government (or the closets to it on offer) because

The Correlation between levels of taxation (as a % of GDP) and the indices for “life-satisfaction” was negative 0.3188

In other words, the more people were taxed, the less satisfied (more depressed) they became and the less they were taxed (and presumably more independent and autonomous their lives and life-style), the more satisfied they were.

I sourced my data from nationmaster.com and I used all the available data, rather than cherry-pick to prove a position.

As a libertarian I hold a fairly simple philosophy of life

We are all here to grow as individuals.

The more we are free to grow in the direction of our choosing, the happier we are.

The more regulated, forced to conform, levelled and controlled, the less satisfied, more depressed we become.

Life-satisfaction becomes a matter of a sense of personal empowerment and self-esteem.

It is tough to feel “empowered” or hold on to self-esteem (and thus easier to become more depressed), when some remote and faceless busy-body is telling you how much you are allowed to earn and how they will extort from you the rewards you have earned by your personal effort.

Regarding UN

The tossers of UN are more interested in setting themselves up as the “remote and faceless busy-bodies” and thus represent the depressive force which should be excised from the real world.

Shadow Minister, Friday, (4 December 2009 8:25:02 AM) said "The statistics are kept mainly for those suffering from clinical depression,"

I think you've missed the point of selecting the test subjects which would be drawn from the general population. What you are implying (using only statistics collected from doctors) is akin to figuring out obesity rates in the population using subjects drawn only from those seeing dieticians.

In response to Col Rouge, Friday, 4 December 2009 10:36:36 AM:

Your suggestion to use tax levels as a proxy overlooks the fact that is it a weak proxy. For the same levels of tax, different spending (say, none on hospitals, all on junkets) lead to different outcomes. Unless, of course, you think the end for which we have societies is a tax regime.

The ideal indicator for success of a state, or a system of organizing a society, is as direct as possible, or else we are merely looking at the flickering shadows on the wall of Plato's cave to assess the weather.

The ideal indicators can be gathered from any society, whether hunter-gatherer, self-sufficient farming, agrarian, industrial, or post-industrial. The only common factor across all these is the existence of human psychology, the possibility of contentment and misery, attachments and loneliness, so population psychological metrics are the only valid subject for comparison of societies and systems.

Note too, that different societies and groups might be pleased or distressed by different things. Measuring psychological distress directly takes this reality into account, even when aggregating across groups.

Balneus “ weak proxy.”

"weak proxy", maybe but

I challenge you to produce a better one, something “stronger”.


“The ideal indicator for success of a state, or a system of organizing a society, is as direct as possible, or else we are merely looking at the flickering shadows on the wall of Plato's cave to assess the weather.”


Rather than elude to some mysterious and obscure measure, I challenge you to produce your (any) results, so we can all objectively analyse them and assess their comparative merits.



Because, whilst you seem to be feel you are entitled to criticize my simple correlation, drawn from auditable data, you have not presented any alternative, other than theoretical mumbo-jumbo and weasel words.


Re “The ideal indicators can be gathered from any society” …..


So, gather them and justify / argue them properly and rely on their validity to carry them through the rigor of objective analysis.


”so population psychological metrics are the only valid subject for comparison of societies and systems.”


I challenge you to actually justify WHY “population psychological metrics “ are the only valid subject for comparison of societies and systems.


“Note too, that different societies and groups might be pleased or distressed by different things. Measuring psychological distress directly takes this reality into account, even when aggregating across groups.”


Every statistic would be ignored on the basis “that different societies and groups might be pleased or distressed by different things.” (called Standard Deviations)


At the end of the day, statistics, like politics, is about the possible.


In essence, we have a collection of blunt instruments to fashion and measure social circumstance, yet you are expecting the fine tools of a electronic micro-surgeon, which we still wait to be invented, to be applied.

I suggest my presentation represent the possible and your expectation is based in the realm of the fanciful or impossible.


I will be happy to listen when you present something of merit, based on data, analysis and reasoned constructs.

But until you can present something “better” than my simple “Tax% : life satisfaction” correlation,

my view remains, uncontested.

In response to: Col Rouge, Saturday, 5 December 2009 10:29:55 AM

It should take only a moment's thought to see your idea of tax as a close proxy for human happiness as irrelevant, rather than correct or incorrect, because if you hold tax levels constant at whatever level you like (including zero), unless political structures and policies make no difference to human happiness or misery, you should still be assessing the outcomes of political decisions and administrative competence as a guide to assessing whether a change in direction is necessary or not.

And yes, there are numerous large studies that used rather long questionnaires (I think one across Latin America done by either the IMF or World Bank a few years back was one, but I cannot lay my hands on the reference) to assess human happiness across a range of political and economic systems, and with different levels of affluence. These demonstrated that the human basics (food, shelter, health services and education) were much better a determinant of life satisfaction than individual or national financial status.

Balneus “It should take only a moment's thought to see your idea of tax as a close proxy for human happiness as irrelevant, rather than correct or incorrect,”

I assume that’s your personal, humble, opinion?

I have no delusions to the matter that tax is never the sole arbiter of life satisfaction but there remains a negative correlation between the two and I would hypothesise, from it that:

The sort of social systems which rely on high tax produce the sort of social environment which is dpressing.

Now the sort of social systems which rely on high tax levels are socialist and as we saw with the iron curtain and we see with the lot of North Koreans, socialist systems need wall and fences to keep their populations imprisoned (and likely depressed).

“, but I cannot lay my hands on the reference”

Of course you cannot… so I will just treat your entire claim as an “irrelevance”.

“These demonstrated that the human basics (food, shelter, health services and education) were much better a determinant of life satisfaction than individual or national financial status.”

Well that was assertion is “founded” on your absent data and as such is “irrelevant”

However, since you seem so impressed with psychology, Maslow had a few ideas about “human basics, food, shelter…”

May I (humbly) suggest you read him.

I know I have and I still feel the relationship between tax % : Life satisfaction is relevant because

Being denied the basics of life… food shelter, one might well be


“Hungry and depressed “


Tax %, as a guide to government style (libertarian being low and socialist being high), indicates the removal of those life qualities which exist ABOVE the lowest level on Maslow’s hierarchical needs.


Feed the body but remove the opportunity for self actualisation and you end up


“Well fed and still depressed”


I suggest you come back when you have some “basic data”


The problem with most psychologists (wanna-bes included) is they think, in their hubris, they are the only cognitive humans on the planet who are entitled to express an opinion.

Balneus,

You were the one that brought up the statistics used for epidemiological studies.

I still remain to be convinced that any study group's figures on depression related to government can be winnowed out from the myriad of other causes.

If you are talking of a general "happiness" index, even then, the relevance to the government of the day and existing policies is extremely tenuous.

"Shadow Minister" Monday, 7 December 2009 8:28:17 AM) is worried about causes: again, causes don't matter - because the total metric for the population reflects management of causes external to the person, and the degree of care available to ameliorate intrinsic causes.

"Col Rouge", (Monday, 7 December 2009 7:18:34 AM) was harsh about the lack of data, so is obviously unaware of the heavy attention this has received from economists in recent times. The Xmas 2006 bumper edition of "The Economist" had a whole swathe of articles on this.

I suggest a quick perusal of "Quality of Life indicators" from the Economist Intelligence Unit (such as http://www.economist.com/media/pdf/QUALITYofLIFE.pdf which is not yet hidden behind the new paywall), and particularly http://www.worldvaluessurvey.org/ which is used by both The Economist and the OECD (downloadable datasets available). What is especially noteworthy is the difference in ranking between per cap GDP and QoL indicators: the US QoL is significantly lower than per cap GDP, which the more socialist Nordic Nanny States rank higher for QoL than their GDP would suggest.

However, the World Values Survey requires a fair bit of collection work - the screening indicators for depression are not, and are therefore reasonable to collect by the ABS on a quarterly basis.

As to Maslow (again Col Rouge's comments): no problem with Maslow from me (although when studying I was a little more of a fan of his fellow-traveller Rogers). But, of course, the shelter/food/health bits need to be covered first... hard to self-actualize without them!