La calidad social. Entre la complejidad y la viabilidad de su análisis

Abstract

The policies of the fifties, sixties and most of the seventies, were marked by the quantitative aspects of the social reality, as evidenced by the theories, methods and techniques in use. It developed an explanatory scientific culture more characterized by the quantitative than the qualitative approach. With the term Social Quality, the other dimension of the social reality is privileged. It was, in fact, with the economic crisis of the seventies and the effects that were derived from it for the rest of the social policies, when the inadequacy of the quantitative aspects were evidenced to explain the whole social reality; in the same way it was, then, when the necessity arose of incorporating the qualitative dimension that allows to have a global comprehension of the reality. The use of the term Social Quality increases day by day, referred to each one of the basic social goods which are the object of social demand. Exactly, for this reason, it becomes necessary to construct indicators of Social Quality; a task not at all easy, but essential. This article is a modest contribution to this complex territory, both conceptually and methodologically speaking.