VICENTE ROYUELA, JORDI SURIÑACH and MÓNICA REYES MEASURING QUALITY OF LIFE IN SMALL AREAS OVER DIFFERENT PERIODS OF TIME Analysis of the province of Barcelona* (Accepted 15 November 2002) ABSTRACT. The purpose of this paper is to describe an index methodo- logy for measuring quality of life, understood multidimensionally, in a set of very different municipalities, units of measurement, and time periods. Although certain technical problems arise when small areas (municipalities) are considered, cross and serial comparison is completed. The methodology was applied in 314 municipalities of the province of Barcelona (Spain). I. INTRODUCTION Quality of life has been investigated and measured for many years in order to carry out comparisons between cities and urban areas (Louis, 1976; Liu, 1978; Blomquist et al., 1988; Rogerson et al., 1989, Stover and Leven, 1992), states (Liu, 1973) or nations (Slottje, 1991; Hirschberg et al., 1991; Dasgupta and Weale, 1992, among others). Several methodologies have been used, and have been adapted to specific contexts. The present paper has a number of objectives. We aim to measure the quality of life following the idea of multidimensionality on which the general concept of well-being is based. We carry out our measurement in small areas, taking as our geographical unit the administrative definition of a municipality inside a province (NUTS III in the European administrative classification); the municipality may be very small (50 inhabitants) or very large (1500000 inhabi- tants as in the city of Barcelona). We also apply this procedure to larger areas than municipalities, which we call “urban systems”. The cross comparison between these municipalities in any partic- ular year is an important feature, but we have also developed a methodology that allows for temporal comparison among areas. Social Indicators Research 64: 51–74, 2003. © 2003 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.