Development of Multifactor Index for Assessing Quality of Life of a Tribal Population of India: Multilevel Analysis Approach

Background: The main objective of this study is to develop multilevel multi-factor index to assess the quality of life of Malayali tribal population of India at the individual and village levels based on nine domains, namely, Demography, Economy, Health, Human Development, Infrastructure Development, Work Participation, Recreation, Social Capital and Self Perception. Also, an attempt is made to classify the individuals as well as villages on the basis of the overall scores of multifactor index within a community which will help policy makers to develop concrete policy recommendations for the improvement of quality of life of this tribal group. Method: Multilevel factor analysis is utilized to determine uncorrelated meaningful factors and their respective weights using Mplus software from the nested dataset consists of values of nine domains of 1096 individuals collected from 19 villages. Multilevel multifactor index is constructed using the weights of these factors. The qualities of lives of different households and of different villages are assessed using the scores of this index. Results: Three different factors are identified at household as well as village levels. The quality of life at Households and at villages levels are classified as poor, low, moderate, good and excellent based on five quintiles of the scores of the multifactor index and the contribution of each domain in this classification is ascertained. Discussion: This study finds that at household as well as at village levels, the quality of life of the individuals of this tribal population increases with increase in education, income and occupation status which make them to lead a healthy life and also make them to find time and money to spend on recreation. Infrastructure does not play a significant role at the house hold level whereas it is a matter at village level. Conclusion: The main purpose of developing this kind of multifactor index at different levels is to provide a tool for tribal development based on realistic data which can be used to monitor the key factors that encompass the social, health, environmental and economic dimensions of quality of lives at the individual/household and community levels of this tribal people.