The Disadvantaged Among the Dutch: A Survey Approach to the Multidimensional Measurement of Social Exclusion

While combating social exclusion has been a key target of the European Union’s social policy in recent years, the concept
remains contested and various ways of measuring its prevalence have been proposed. In the Netherlands a survey-based method
has been in use since 2004, which refers to four theoretical elements of social exclusion: material deprivation, limited social
participation, inadequate access to basic social rights and a lack of normative integration. In this article we propose an
improved and more concise version of the instrument. Using focus groups and cognitive tests, the study first examined whether
it adequately covers the different elements of social exclusion. Based on the results, the existing items were reformulated
and supplemented. A revised questionnaire was then submitted to a new stratified sample of 650 respondents, randomly drawn
from an online panel and a database of people without access to the Internet. The weighted outcomes may be regarded as representative
for the entire adult Dutch population, although some caveats apply. Using nonlinear canonical correlation analysis, we identified
a single underlying dimension in our new data set. This contains 15 items, with three to four indicators for each of the theoretical
elements of social exclusion. According to our general index, just under 5 % of the Dutch population aged 18 years or older
are faced with a serious degree of social exclusion. On the four subscales the figure ranges from 7 % (social rights) to 22 %
(material deprivation).