This volume provides an overview of the ways the Italian school of quality of life studies addresses well-being and quality of life, from both a substantive and a methodological point of view. It discusses various topics such as those of equitable and sustainable wellbeing, lifestyles, the organization of economy and welfare, as well as aspects related to the measurement of quality of life in small towns, institutional transparency and corruption prevention indicators. Chapters presented in this volume are drawn from papers presented at the conferences of the Italian Association for Quality of Life Studies (AIQUAV) held in Florence, Italy, in 2015 and 2016. The volume is organised into three parts. The first part is devoted to methods and indicators for research on quality of life, the second part to social sustainability, lifestyles, cultural aspects and local applications, and the third to economy, welfare and quality of life. The volume hosts contributions that are interdisciplinary in scope and mirror the complexity of the globalized world.
Adele Bianco is Associate Professor of General Sociology at the University of Chieti-Pescara. PhD in Sociology of Development (University of Pisa, 1994), she has been lecturer and vising professor in several foreign Universities in Germany, Denmark, Kosovo.
She was CNR (Italian National Research Center) and CNR NATO Senior fellow (1995-1996). She is Editor in Chief of the Book Series “Studi in Scienze Umane e Sociali” Quodlibet Publishing, Macerata and member of the editorial board of the International Journal of Sustainable Development Research and of the scientific board of the “Applied Sociological Theory” Book Series Harmattan Publishing. She is member of the scientific committee of AIQUAV, Italian Association on Quality of life studies. Before getting a permanent position in the Italian University, she worked for ten years a civil servant at the Italian Ministry of Labour and was EUR.E.S. (European Employment Service) Adviser forthe European Commission.
Paola Conigliaro is PhD candidate in Applied Social Sciences at the Sapienza University of Rome. She is a statistical technician at the Italian National Institute of Statistics (Istat). She had previous experiences as researcher in various public and private institutions. Main subjects of those researches were organisational studies, labour sociology, social inclusion through work, organisational well-being. She also has a good experiece as manager of social cooperatives. In recent years she devoted the research activity to social sustainability, decent work and subjective well-being. She was member of the Scientific Commission of the BES (Equitable and Sustainable Well-being) project, with the role of technical support. On behalf of the AIQUAV (Italian Association of Quality of Life Studies) she is member of the working group on Goal 8 (SDGs) of the Italian Alliance for Sustainable Development (AsviS).
Michela Gnaldi is Associate Professor of Social Statistics at the Department of Political Sciences of the University of Perugia, Italy. She has spent the initial part of her career as a research fellow at the Department of Statistics of the University of Glasgow (UK) and as a statistician at the National Foundation for Educational Research (UK). Over the last 15 years has taken part in and led several international and national projects. She builded up research collaborations in Europe and beyond and authored over 60 research products published in international journals and encyclopedias on the themes of composite indicator construction, psychometrics, corruption prevention measurement, vote behaviour estimation. She is editor for Springer and FrancoAngeli, associate editor of Statistica Applicata – Italian Journal of Applied Statistics (RCE), member of the editorial board of Journal of Well-Being Assessment (Springer), and member of the scientific committee of AIQUAV, Italian Association on Quality of life studies.
