The application of selected methods of multivariate statistical analysis to study objective quality of life in Polish and Belarusian regions

Abstract

The concept of life quality has been studied by specialists from a variety of scientific fields: economics, social geography, sociology, psychology, medicine, political sciences, and others. This contributes to the complementariness of the notion and broadens its interdisciplinary perspective, but on the other hand, it leads to a lack of unanimity in terms of the definition and measurement of the quality of life. Meanwhile, all developed countries in the world regard enhancing life quality as a priority of state policy. With the further advancement of our civilisation, quality of life will become a major issue in economic development. Therefore, monitoring this aspect of economic life, at both country and regional level, seems to be of particular significance. The paper aims to assess the suitability of selected methods of multivariate statistical analysis for the construction of a synthetic measure of objective quality of life. The study employs two methods of constructing synthetic measures of objective life quality: the linear ordering method – TOPSIS, and factor analysis. The results obtained by means of multivariate statistical analysis methods made it possible to create ratings of Polish and Belarusian regions in terms of objective quality of life and to further divide the regions into typological groups.