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Show In all but 2 categories nationwide Quality of life in Utah below norm with their betrothed last year, compared com-pared to a national average of 5.1 percent. Respondents to the NORC survey were asked to rate the seriousness seri-ousness of each of the 58 life events on a scale of 9 (very least serious) to 100 (very most serious). Seriousness ratings were then averaged across all respondents, ranging from 50.2 percent (infertility (infertili-ty or otherwise being unable to have a child) to 94.3 percent (the death of a child). Analysis of the responses of a subset of Utah survey participants indicated that Utahns' seriousness ratings were virtually identical to the national sample. SRC, part of the College of Social and Behavioral Science's Center for Public Policy and Administration, Ad-ministration, surveyed 605 randomly random-ly selected adults. Approximately three-fourths of the respondents interviewed in-terviewed reside in Utah's urban counties-Salt Lake, Weber, Davis and Utah. Nearly one-half live in Salt Lake County. The quality of life in Utah falls below that of the national norm in all but two categories, according to a recent survey conducted by the Survey Research Center at the University Uni-versity of Utah. Utah surpassed the national average in only nine categories-health categories-health and law and order. Nearly 68 percent of Utahns enjoy en-joy a satisfactory level of law and order in their communities com-'yed com-'yed to the national average of j. 6 percent. Utahns reported fewer instances of robberies, assaults, burglaries, arrests and civil suits. However, residents reported more instances of their children being arrested ar-rested than did the rest of the nation. Nearly 17 percent have good health, compared to 15 percent nationally. Approximately three-fourths three-fourths of Utahns surveyed and their national counterparts-responded counterparts-responded that they gain "quite a bit of satisfaction from their health and physical condition. Questions about 58 life events rwere posed in nine "life domains,' or categories, including health, 15 questions; work and employment, 10; financial condition, 12; home and residence, three; family and personal, six; law and order, seven; human rights, one; school, two; and transportation, two. This was not a public opinion. ' 'We purposely did not ask people for their subjective impression of quality of life because those perceptions percep-tions can be biased," noted Dr. Lois M. Haggard, SRC director. "Instead, we simply asked survey respondents to report yes or no as to whether a given event had happened happen-ed to them during the past year. "The study is also largely protected pro-tected from researcher bias, meaning mean-ing that if I had designed the survey, I might have been tempted to include in-clude questions on outdoor recreation recrea-tion that might make Utah look better. ' ' The University of Chicago's National Opinion Research Center provided the national interview data and designed the survey. Some of the differences between the national and Utah results can be attributed to different interviewing techniques (telephone vs. face-to-face). In order to minimize these differences, differ-ences, SRC used the same question wordings and sequence, and only those NORC respondents who had telephones were included in the Utah report. Percentages reported for Utah are within a plus or minus 4.1 percent margin of error. An open-ended question, asked prior to the other survey queries, found that financial hardship was mentioned most often as the "most important problem' ' facing both Utah and the United States. Thirty-seven-point-four percent of Utahns rated it tops compared to 28.2 percent per-cent national rating. Even though the recession hasn't hit Utah as hard as it has most states, more Utahns said that at times during the past year they have been unable to buy needed food or pay for necessary medical care than the national average. Twenty-one percent of respondents report they have no health insurance. This compares to 11.6 percent nationally. Ten percent of Utahns said they have been the target of discrimination discrimina-tion during the previous year, double the national figure of five percent. Haggard points out that in Utah such discrimination is often religious. "Over one-third of Utahns who reported discrimination said it was because of their religion, while one-fourth said it was because of their gender. ' Most respondents reported they were "very happy" or "pretty happy' with the way things are, with only 6.6 percent of Utahns and 9.9 percent of the national sample reporting they were "not too happy" with their lives. The greatest discrepancy between be-tween Utahns and their national counterparts occurred in the family and personal relationships category. Twenty-point-four percent broke up |