Abstract
At present, the field of social impact assessment for water resources development contains a proliferation of often divergent listings of indicators for social well-being. One of the major reasons for this is that underlying assumptions concerning the nature of social well-being and its measurement are usually left implicit. This article identifies seven issues and problems relating to SIAs that have contributed to these differing approaches. The seven issues and problems covered are: (1) levels of causation; (2) objective versus subjective conceptualization and measurement; (3) projective versus evaluative assessment; (4) economic versus social and psychological models of motivation; (5) equating microlevel components with macrolevel data; (6) homogeneous versus pluralistic views of American society; and (7) specific phasing. Priorities for future research are also suggested with respect to these issues.
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