Possibility of Applying a Normative Approach in Developing Quality of Life Standards

Abstract

Due to the multifaceted and complex nature of its solution, the problem of assessing and improving the quality of life of the population causes the need to apply standardization. Nowadays, certain services rendered to the population in various areas of life (e.g., education, health care, ecology, etc.) are already considered through the prism of standards. Standards and areas of social responsibility and technology movement (people, cargo, information data, etc.) are also applied. These evaluation criteria are used to characterize certain aspects of quality of life. However, there is no unified methodological basis for standardization. The approaches differ in the scope of the assessment areas, the number of indicators, and the methodology for calculating the criterion values. There is no mechanism for developing and justifying a system of standards to assess the quality of life in rural areas. The Russian practice of standardization uses such categories as “social standard” and “minimum social standards.” However, these categories are not objective measures of the quality of life, given the socioeconomic development of society. The scientific novelty of the research lies in the development and methodological justification of the approach to develop a standard of quality of life in rural areas. The result of the proposed regulatory approach is the possibility to form a base of norms and standards using a unified methodological basis. In turn, through the indicators of the standard (normative values) of the quality of life, this will allow putting subjective and abstract concepts of “decent life” and “free development of a person,” enshrined in the Constitution of the Russian Federation, into the language of numbers, relying on the implementation of state programs.