A GIS Based Comparison of Statistical Methods for Identifying Quality of Life Index in The Provinces of Turkey

Abstract

Throughout history, human beings have lived to survive, have struggled to have a job and have enough income for a better life. But at the point we have reached today, people's quality of life not only depends on wealth and employment, but also on many subjective factors, including the conditions of the environment in which they live, physical and mental health, education, recreation, security, leisure, freedom, human rights, social belonging and happiness level. Although this situation is related with the individuals at micro scale, it is one of the important focal points of central and local governments on macro scale. For administrators, revealing regional differences in well-being is an important criterion for eliminating social inequalities. There are many different multi criteria decision making based studies calculated the index of quality of life in 81 provinces of Turkey in accordance with 11 dimensions and 41 indicators determined by Turkstat. The aim of this study is to compare the quality of life studies and rankings of cities based on six different statistical methods. GIS based IDW interpolation technique was used to understand the spatial distribution of well-being index and make an accurate comparison of the calculation methodologies. As a result of the study, it was seen that different methods performed on the same data gave very different results from each other.