Beyond Pen and Paper: Reimagining Assessment of Personal Relationships and Quality of Life Using Digital Technologies

Abstract

AbstractPersonal interactions are an important element of an individual’s health and life quality in the long term. As the site of many interpersonal interactions has been moved to the digital domain, human society has never been more intertwined. The digital footprints of interpersonal interactions can be quantified and measured via smartphones and wearables, providing more objective, quantitative, and accurate measurements. This chapter focuses on quantifying personal relationships in the context of quality of life, specifically focusing on novel technology-based quantification solutions. It first analyzes traditional qualitative quality of life measures based on subjective self-reporting that include measures of personal relationships, specifically the WHOQOL-BREF, WHOQOL-100, RAND-36, KIDSCREEN-27, SWLS, and Beach Center FQOL, as well as other non-validated measures. The chapter then proposes novel technological solutions for data gathering and analysis by introducing the concept of digital item representation, a process that leverages personal datasets originating from smartphones and wearables. The chapter also discusses issues relating to users’ privacy that influence the acceptance of such everyday technologies as well as the quality of data collected in the long term.