Quality of Life: How Community Leaders and Ordinary Residents Assess Various Aspects of Life in Four Kentucky Mountain Counties. Kentucky Agricultural Experiment Station Report, RS-45, August 1975.

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Department of Agriculture, Washington, DC.

Churches; Community Leaders; Comparative Analysis; Employment Opportunities; Heads of Households; Health Services; Income; Land Use; Law Enforcement; Local Government; Physical Environment; Quality of Life; Rural Population; Schools; Social Indicators; Surveys; Welfare

Data derived from parallel questioning of 1971 knowledgables and leaders (N=111) and a 1973 sample of household heads and homemakers (N=464) living in four rural Eastern Kentucky counties (Harlan, Perry, Whitley, and Wolfe) were used to assess both objective and subjective aspects of quality of life. The indicators employed were: income; job opportunities; agriculture and land use; transportation; public utilities; public schools; churches and religion; medical care and health services; welfare; county government; crime and law enforcement; physical environment; opportunities for special groups. Results indicated: knowledgables tended to be more favorable than the household sample in their assessments; both groups were highly favorable; the two groups gave equal assessments of the current quality of schools and improvements in wages and job opportunities, agriculture and land use, opportunities for Negroes, and churches and religion; fewer than half of both groups saw improvement in county government, local politics, crime/law enforcement, the physical environment, agriculture and land use, and churches and religious life; aspects of life quality rated favorably by less than 50% of the residents and by more than 50% of the knowledgables were: quality of law enforcement and improvements in job opportunities, real income. recreational opportunities, and opportunities for old people. It was concluded that subjective indicators have some validity. (JC)

1977

ED137006