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 | Read and Print: The Reader's Digest Family Index Produced with the help of the Gallup Organization, this index is the first measure of family well-being based on criteria set by American families themselves. |
The Reader's Digest Family Index is a new measure of the overall well-being of the American family. It is built upon areas of interest and concern that the Americans we surveyed told us were important in their lives -- finances, health and health care, relationships and community. From their responses we were able to determine the relative importance of each of these areas, and so we gave "weight" to each. Over 2,000 randomly selected family members participated in this telephone survey, which took an average of 16 minutes to complete. The sample had a 2.4 percent margin of error at the 95 percent confidence level.
In a nation as diverse as ours, however, how does one define "family"? For this landmark survey, we used the U.S. Census Bureau definition: a household with two or more people related by blood, marriage or adoption. Seventy percent of American households fit this category.But there is great human richness and variety underlying that dry definition. Each of the 2,003 adult respondents who answered the questions in the survey can be thought of as a thread that interweaves with all the other threads. Taken together, they create a living tapestry of our society at a critical moment in time. Here's what we found.
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