Quality of life is fast becoming the standard measure of outcome in clinical trials, residential satisfaction, and educational achievement, to name several social settings, with the consequent proliferation of assessment instruments. Yet its interpretation and definition provoke widespread disagreement, thereby rendering the significance of quantification uncertain. Moreover, quality, or qualia, is philosophically distinct from quantity, or quantitas, and so it is unclear how quantification can serve to modulate quality. Is it thus possible for quantification to enhance quality of life? We propose here that an interpretivistic conception of quantification may offer a more valid approach by which to address quality of life in sociological research.
KeywordsInterpretivismQuantificationDialecticalQuality of Life
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