Open Access Interpretivistic Conception of Quantification: Tool for Enhancing Quality of Life?

Copyright © 2013 Denis Larrivee, Adriana Gini. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. 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 as-sessment instruments. Yet its interpretation and definition provoke widespread disagreement, thereby rendering the significance of quantification uncertain. Moreover, quality, or qualia, is philosophically dis-tinct 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 con-ception of quantification may offer a more valid approach by which to address quality of life in socio-logical research