To view the pdf click here. To view the online version click here.
My project is a datavisualisation comparing the factors of ‘quality of life’ between Vietnam and Australia as defined by the Economist’s Intelligence Index. It is originally designed as print poster with roughly A3 dimensions, the online version can be accessed here. The accompanying rationale reads as follows:
In the years following the Vietnam War my parents immigrated to Australia where I was born. As a first generation immigrant, it is impossible not to speculate about the differences between my life and those of girls of my generation who remained in Vietnam.
It is an ideological fallacy that the world is divided into two groups; the rich West and the poor East, with the former possessing a higher ‘quality of life’. When comparing ‘quality of life’ we are burdened with the preconception that material wellbeing is the sole indicator for utility. This is the misnomer of the developed world. In the field of economics, it is now widely recognised that several factors, be they social, environmental, or political, are needed to gain a broader definition. These indicators are, by necessity, an arbitrary measure. Any attempt at quantifying happiness and wellbeing is prejudice to a selection bias, affecting not only the factors of assessment, but also the units of measurement. On what scale can these indices be accurately compared? There is no empirical solution.
With these factors in mind, the aim here is to present a tentative comparison based on the tangible indicators of ‘quality of life’ between Australia and Vietnam. The data represent five of The Economist Intelligence Unit’s nine indicators for ‘quality of life’; these are geography, represented by people per square km; material wellbeing, represented by quintile income distribution; health, represented by causes of infant mortality; job security, represented by unemployment rate; and gender equality, represented by female representation in work sectors. To present a neutral image the data is not accompanied by any supplementary commentary. It can be interpreted openly without prompts or bias.
Quoth Barthes, “The birth of the reader must be at the cost of the death of the author” (Roland Barthes in ‘The Death of the Author’), that is; narrating a text imposes a limit to the final signified. This restricts the range of meaning that can be drawn by the reader. They are not passive receivers of texts but active players in constructing meaning. Thus, here, to promote the functions of the reader the data is left bare so that the reader may evaluate it using their own standards for ‘quality of life’.
Within this project my aim was to emphasis the natural biasness of data. That there is a prevailing ideology of the rich West dominating over the poor East is a contributing factor in my choice to present the data without prompts or commentary. As stated in the rationale, the project only attempts at presenting a neutral image for readers to interpret as they see fit using their own definition for ‘quality of life’.
The final document is designed as a print document rather than an online document to best present the data without the restrictions of monitor size, resolution, etc. It is not interactive display and so an online version is rather benign, it restricts the viewer and compromises quality without delivering any extra, complimentary benefits of the medium.
The majority of the data was collected online via the WHO website as well as the UNICEF website (a full list of references can be found below). Collating the data was the most challenging part of the project as the two countries very rarely had corresponding records to draw from. For example, census data within Vietnam was generally incomplete or missing for the most part of the 80s and early 90s, finding credible data was also an issue as on more than one occasion I found conflicting data sets for the same country. As a result I had to be very critical in my research and when analysing the data, to best discern between credible and non-credible data.
Data Reference List:
References:
Australian Bureau of Statistics (2008) Australian Bureau of Statistics [Online] Retrieved from http://www.abs.gov.au/ on the 5th November, 2008
Economist Intelligence Unit (2008) The Economist Intelligence Unit’s quality-of-life Index [Online] Retrieved from http://www.economist.com/media/pdf/quality_of_life.pdf on the 9th of December, 2008
General Statistics Office of Vietnam (2008) General Statistics Office of Vietnam [Online] Retrieved from http://www.gso.gov.vn/default_en.aspx?tabid=491 on the 28th of November, 2008
Unicef (2008) Statistics and Monitoring [Online] Retrieved from http://www.unicef.org/statistics/ on the 9th of December, 2008
United Nations Statistics Division (2008) UN data: A world of Information[Online] Retrieved from http://data.un.org/ on the 29th November, 2008
World Health Organization (2008) World Health Organization: Data and Statistics [Online] Retrieved from http://www.who.int/countries/en/ on the 29th November, 2008
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