{'fraction_non_alphanumeric': 0.016738030362008563, 'fraction_numerical': 0.0, 'mean_word_length': 5.506329113924051, 'pattern_counts': {'":': 0, '<': 0, '<?xml version=': 0, '>': 0, 'https://': 0, 'lorem ipsum': 0, 'www.': 0, 'xml': 0}, 'pii_count': 0, 'substrings_counts': 0, 'word_list_counts': {'cursed_substrings.json': 0, 'profanity_word_list.json': 0, 'sexual_word_list.json': 0, 'zh_pornsignals.json': 0}}
Quality of life and participation

Quality of life (QoL) and well-being can be described in broad, multidimensional ways that incorporate objective and subjective accounts of personal feelings, social relationships, local environment, societal values, political institutions, economic conditions, and international relations. A Nordic group has recommended the classification in Table I to describe the QoL of an individual; Table II shows indicators of child well-being reported at a national level. In practice, such approaches are too wide-ranging for meaningful quantitative analysis. Recent years have seen the development of ideas about QoL which concern an individual’s personal perception of their place in the world and society. It is a person’s selfreported view and therefore subjective. This modern meaning of QoL may be confused with other outcomes which could be equally important but different. This paper tries to identify and unravel these varied elements. It is also important to appreciate that various definitions are used to reflect the different stages in the evolution of the concepts and that these operational definitions are likely to change in future. Two important and relatively recent developments in the social sciences are the social model of disability and a new approach to the sociology of childhood. Their implications emphasize the relevance of the environment to participation and the importance of QoL respectively. The ‘social model of disability’ regards disability as resulting from the interaction between individuals and their respective environments, rather than as something within the individual. This model was developed in the United Kingdom and has been central in the development of disability studies. Originally, the social model took an uncompromising position that all disability is caused by societal and structural barriers – whether they be environmental such as inaccessible buildings, institutional such as segregated schooling, or attitudinal; any failure of society to ensure sufficient environmental adjustment represented discrimination against a minority group and a denial of their human rights. Since then, the model has been modified to indicate that much but not all disability is attributable to the environment. There are two reasons for this. First, physically disabled people themselves say their impairments are relevant to their lives and to their interaction with their environment; second, there are some aspects of participation which a person with severe intellectual impairment could never