老年人生活满意度年龄差异研究

用2002、2005、2008年中国高龄老人健康长寿调查数据,考察了年龄对老年人生活满意度的影响。研究发现,年龄因素影响老年人的生活满意度自评。年岁的上升对老年人的生活满意度既有积极影响也有消极影响。对于老年人来说,年龄对生活满意度的正向作用超过了负向作用,因此,老人的年龄越大,生活满意度评价越积极。进一步考察了年龄积极作用三个可能的来源,包括年龄成熟效应、同期群正效应、存活效应,发现年龄的积极作用主要是由年龄的成熟效应引致的。     

Gender Differences in Happiness and Life Satisfaction Among Adolescents in Hong Kong: Relationships and Self-Concept

This study uses survey data from adolescents (N = 1,428) in Hong Kong to test the association of gender with happiness and life satisfaction through relationship style and self-concept. While self-esteem and purpose in life are associated with higher happiness and life satisfaction, having more close friends is related to higher happiness, but not necessarily life satisfaction. On the other hand, boys with higher academic achievement are happier, but not more satisfied; the opposite holds true for girls. Our results provide a much-needed investigation of the differential effect of gender on the subjective well-being of adolescents. Contributing to the theoretical debate about the concepts of subjective well-being, we argue that happiness and life satisfaction are empirically and conceptually distinct. Life satisfaction might be characterized by more profound enjoyment and achievement in life than happiness.     

Aging and Life Satisfaction

This paper was intended to examine how major life events – suchas retirement, deterioration of health, and loss of spouse –experienced in the aging process may affect the elderly's lifesatisfaction. An explanation was also proposed to the change inthe effects of age groups on life satisfaction because of thecontrol of the aging effect. A simple form of a longitudinalsurvey conducted in Taiwan in 1989 and 1993 was used for theempirical test. It was found that life satisfaction among theelderly decreased as age increased beyond 65 years of age. Itwas also found that social demographic variables, an incomedecrease, living arrangement, and level of activity participationhave a profound impact on life satisfaction of Taiwan's elderly. When the correlates were controlled, the coefficients for agegroups greater than 70 turned positive. This change could beexplained by two types of cohort experience: (1) from rough toprosperous life experience and (2) cohort norm on lifeexpectancy.     

老年人生活满意度差异的来源与解析:一个基于结构方程模型的实证研究

本文根据CHARLS 2011年全国基线数据并运用结构方程模型,通过社会地位、家庭经济、身体健康、心理健康与老年人生活满意度的复杂交互影响关系,解读老年人生活满意度差异的来源.结果表明,社会地位对老年人生活满意度的影响表现出双面性和复杂性;家庭经济是心理健康的首要因素,与老年人生活满意度呈正相关;家庭经济对身体健康影响不显著,老年人心理健康是身体健康的主要影响因素;老年人生活满意度还表现出性别差异,男性表现更低.     

School Satisfaction Among Adolescents: Testing Different Indicators for its Measurement and its Relationship with Overall Life Satisfaction and Subjective Well-Being in Romania and Spain

This paper presents results from two samples of adolescents aged 13–16 from Romania and Spain (N = 930 + 1,945 = 2,875). The original 7-item version of the Personal Well-Being Index (PWI) was used, together with an item on overall life satisfaction (OLS) and a set of six items related to satisfaction with school. A confirmatory factor analysis of the six school satisfaction items shows good fit statistics when relating them to a latent variable. However, said latent variable does not show a good fit when related to the OLS or the PWI. Tests have led to the conclusion that the item that best summarises satisfaction with school is “satisfaction with my life as a student”. Adding this item to the PWI-7 has shown a good fit with Structural Equation Modeling and higher standardised loading on the OLS. The analysis developed here, while confirming that the inclusion of a domain on satisfaction with school life contributes to the PWI with unique variance (2.5 % in this research), also offers an explanation for the surprising results obtained for adolescents in other countries (e.g. in Australia, Tomyn and Cummins in Soc Indicat Res 101(3):405–418 2010) by showing that satisfaction with friends at school and satisfaction with classmates did not significantly contribute to satisfaction with school. Our results suggest that school satisfaction is highly related to satisfaction with teachers, but weakly related to overall life satisfaction, while satisfaction with school friends and satisfaction with classmates are highly related to overall life satisfaction, but weakly related to satisfaction with school. Satisfaction with life as a student seems to be the item that best reconciles this “paradox” (in adults’ eyes), at least with our samples of Romanian and Spanish adolescents.     

Life Satisfaction and Happiness in Turkey

This research aims to investigate life satisfaction and happiness in Turkey. It extends the previous researches on subjective well-being (SWB) for Turkey by considering both happiness and life satisfaction. The previous researches for Turkey are local studies, and their findings cannot be generalized to the population of Turkish society. Given these facts, the factors that shape individual happiness and life satisfaction amongst Turkish people are determined using a representative survey of sociocultural and political change, World Values Survey (WVS). Some results obtained in this study are similar to typical findings such as a negative age effect, positive influences of income and health status, and a negative effect of unemployment. Contrary to the expectations, middle education has a negative direct effect on life satisfaction among females, and the upper education level is insignificant in the life satisfaction model. By comparing the correlates of happiness and life satisfaction across different years, this research aims to provide insights for policy makers and professionals to improve the perceived lives of Turkish people.

Testing for Measurement Invariance in the Satisfaction with Life Scale: A Comparison of Russians and North Americans

This study examined the comparability of Satisfaction With Life Scale (SWLS) [Diener, Emmons, Larsen, & Griffin, 1985, Social Indicators Research, 34: 7–32] scores across U.S. and Russian student and community groups. Criteria for weak measurement invariance were met when comparing U.S. and Russian groups (combining student and community samples). Criteria for weak and strong measurement invariance were met when comparing the U.S. and Russian student samples. However, when comparing the U.S. and Russian community samples, the results showed a significant statistic for a baseline model, indicating a lack of comparability across samples. The costs of failing to meet criteria for weak, strong, and strict measurement invariance are discussed. An erratum to this article is available at .     

Personality and Life Events as Predictors of Adolescents’ Life Satisfaction: Do Life Events Mediate the Link Between Personality and Life Satisfaction?

This study examined the association among personality traits, life events and life satisfaction, and the underlying pathways from personality traits to life satisfaction. A total of 1,961 adolescents were recruited from 21 secondary schools in Hong Kong. The adolescent version of the Chinese Personality Assessment Inventory (CPAI-A), the Chinese Adolescent Life Events Checklist (CALEC) and the Satisfaction With Life Scale (SWLS) were employed to assess their personality, life events and life satisfaction, respectively. Multiple regression analysis showed there was an additional value of the indigenously derived scales of CPAI-A, including the Family Orientation, Harmony and Ren-Qing scales, in predicting life satisfaction beyond the universal personality traits. Results also indicated that there was a partial mediation effect of negative life events on personality traits in the prediction of life satisfaction.     

Sustainable Consumption and Life Satisfaction

The purpose of this study was to examine the association between sustainable consumption and life satisfaction. One aspect of sustainable consumption focused on in this study is the environment friendly purchase or green purchase. Using data collected from consumers in 14 cities in China, we found that consumers who reported green purchase intention and behavior had higher scores in life satisfaction compared to other consumers after controlling for gender, age, education, and family income. The findings add evidence to the literature that suggests happiness is associated with prosocial spending (Dunn et al., Science 319:1687–1688 in 2008).     

Importance Weighting in Client Satisfaction Measures: Lessons from the Life Satisfaction Literature

The linearisation approach to approximating variance of complex non-linear statistics is a well-established procedure. The basis of this approach is to reduce non-linear statistics to a linear form, justified on the basis of asymptotic properties of large populations and samples. For diverse cross-sectional measures of inequality such linearised forms are available, though the derivations involved can be complex. Replication methods based on repeated resampling of the parent sample provide an alternative approach to variance estimation of complex statistics from complex samples. These procedures can be computationally demanding but tend to be straightforward technically. Perhaps the simplest and the best established among these is the Jackknife Repeated Replication (JRR) method. Recently the JRR method has been shown to produce comparable variance for cross-sectional poverty measures (Verma and Betti in J Appl Stat 38(8):1549–1576, 2011); and it has also been extended to estimate the variance of longitudinal poverty measures for which Taylor approximation is not currently available, or at least cannot be easily derived. This paper extends the JRR methodology further to the estimation of variance of differences and averages of inequality measures. It illustrates the application of JRR methodology using data from four waves of the EU-SILC for Spain. For cross-sectional measures design effect can be decomposed into the effect of clustering and stratification, and that of weighting under both methodologies. For differences and averages of these poverty measures JRR method is applied to compute variance and three separate components of the design effect—effect of clustering and stratification, effect of weighting, and an additional effect due to correlation of different cross-sections from panel data—combining these the overall design effect can be estimated.     

Religiosity and Life Satisfaction Across the Life Course

Scant attention has been paid to social catalysts of the increase in religiosity in the maturational and aging process. Using the 1988 Gallup Survey, this paper first explores four major measures of religiosity (personal devotion, participation in public ritual, divine interaction, and preference for public or privatized religiosity) for seven age groups. Next, the impact of these religiosity measures on satisfaction with life is assessed for each of the major age categories. In light of these findings, the authors move toward developing a theory of religiosity and life course.     

The Association Between School Stress,Life Satisfaction and Depressive Symptoms in Adolescents: Life Satisfaction as a Potential Mediator

The aim of the present study was to investigate the interrelationships between school-related stress (school performance, teacher interaction), life satisfaction, and depressive symptoms, as well as the potential mediating role of life satisfaction on the association between school-related stress and depressive symptoms. A total of 1,239 adolescents (13–18 years of age) from public elementary and secondary schools in mid-Norway participated in the school-based survey. The data were analysed using structural equations modelling. The present study showed that stress of school performance was significantly and positively related to depressive symptoms and significantly and inversely related to life satisfaction. At the bivariate levels, stress of teacher interaction was associated with more depressive symptoms and reduced life satisfaction. However, these associations were non-significant in the multivariate analyses, controlled for stress of school performance. A significant inverse association was found between life satisfaction and depressive symptoms. Further, life satisfaction partly mediated the association between stress of school performance and depressive symptoms. The results reflect the complexity of the interaction between adolescents’ experience of school performance stress and mental health, and the role of life satisfaction as a potentially relevant mediator of this association.     

The Divergent Meanings of Life Satisfaction: Item Response Modeling of the Satisfaction with Life Scale in Greenland and Norway

Cultural differences in response to the Satisfaction With Life Scale (SWLS) items is investigated. Data were fit to a mixed Rasch model in order to identify latent classes of participants in a combined sample of Norwegians (N = 461) and Greenlanders (N = 180). Initial analyses showed no mean difference in life satisfaction between the two subsamples. After transforming the ordinal raw scores into interval scales while simultaneously controlling for response bias, different results appeared. First, approximately 80% of the participants in the Greenlandic subsample fit a latent class with a large degree of random responding to the SWLS. Second, relative to the Norwegians, more Greenlanders were using extreme categories in responding to the SWLS. After statistically controlling for this tendency, Norwegians were in general more satisfied with their lives than Greenlanders. Third, Greenlanders who belonged to one specific latent class were more satisfied than their Norwegian counterparts. A salient feature of this class was the relative unwillingness of respondents to change the circumstances of their lives if they were given such an opportunity. The above results are a reminder of the care that must be used in analyzing survey data across cultures. The analytical strategy applied in the article offers an improved approach to handling such data.     

Social Coping and Life Satisfaction in Adolescents

This study examined the relationships among early adolescent social coping behavior and measures of subjective well-being, specifically global life satisfaction and friend satisfaction. A total of 1,011 students in grades 7–8 at a southeastern US middle school completed measures of global life satisfaction, friend satisfaction and coping, on two occasions, 5 months apart. Social support seeking coping behavior at Time 1, but not problem-solving, distancing, internalizing or externalizing coping behaviors at Time 1, uniquely predicted global life satisfaction and friend satisfaction at Time 2. Implications for research and promoting adolescent well-being are discussed.     

Fertility and Life Satisfaction in Rural Ethiopia

Despite recent strong interest in the link between fertility and subjective well-being, the focus has centered on developed countries. For poorer countries, in contrast, the relationship remains rather elusive. Using a well-established panel survey—the Ethiopian Rural Household Survey (ERHS)—we investigate the empirical relationship between fertility and life satisfaction in rural Ethiopia, the largest landlocked country in Africa. Consistent with the fertility theories for developing countries and with the sociodemographic characteristics of rural Ethiopia, we hypothesize that this relationship varies by gender and across life stages, being more positive for men and for parents in old age. Indeed, our results suggest that older men benefit the most in terms of life satisfaction from having a large number of children, while the recent birth of a child is detrimental for the subjective well-being of women at reproductive ages. We address endogeneity issues by using lagged life satisfaction in ordinary least squares regressions, through fixed-effects estimation and the use of instrumental variables.     

Family Constellations and Life Satisfaction in Europe

Existing research on family and well-being has generally focused on the traditional family, and has largely ignored the increasing diversity in family forms and relations. Our aim in this paper is to help fill this gap by investigating the extent of the relationship between living arrangements and life satisfaction (LS) in Europe. We examined variations in life satisfaction by applying a multilevel approach (i.e., individuals nested in countries) to data from the 2007 European Quality of Life Survey. First, we found that levels of life satisfaction among families consisting of couples with children were significantly higher than among people in other (less typical) family arrangements. Second, our results illustrate that after the socioeconomic situation of the family was taken into account, the influence of family status on LS disappeared almost completely. Overall, our findings suggest that the lower levels of life satisfaction experienced by people living in atypical families can be largely attributed to their weaker socioeconomic position.     

Validation of the Satisfaction with Life Scale to Brazilians: Evidences of Measurement Noninvariance Across Brazil and US

Satisfaction with life is one of three hallmarks of subjective well-being, along with frequent positive emotions and infrequent negative emotions (Diener et al. in Psychol Bull 125:276–302, 1999), and the satisfaction with life scale (SWLS; Diener et al. in J Pers Assess 49:91–95, 1985) has been used worldwide to evaluate it. The current study seeks to (a) adapt and gather evidence of validity and reliability of the SWLS for a Brazilian sample, (b) evaluate gender equivalence on Brazilian university students, and (c) test for invariance between Brazilian and US samples. Participants were US (N = 241), and Brazilian (N = 1,388) undergraduates. Results from the Brazilian sample, based on confirmatory factor analyses and measurement invariance tests, showed: (a) evidence of validity of the scale, (b) scalar invariance across gender, (c) scalar invariance within group. However, nonequivalence between Brazil and US samples was found. Such results suggest that within comparisons can be conducted with Brazilian undergraduates, but comparisons between Brazil and the US might be misleading due to lack of invariance. Similar findings have already been reported in other cultures and raise questions about cross cultural studies with this scale.     

Normative Life Satisfaction in Chinese Societies

Research over several decades about subjective life satisfaction has led to the conclusion that the majority of people seem to be satisfied with their lives when their social and physical needs are met. In empirical studies which have used self-report instruments, this trend is reflected in respondents’ consistent preference for the positive end of scales. This led to the suggestion that there is a normative range for life satisfaction, which should hold true for general population data and, therefore, serve as a reference point, or a gold standard, for comparison (Cummins Social Indicators Research, 35, 179–200, 1995, Social Indicators Research, 43, 307–334, 1998). Subsequent research has shown that Western and non-Western samples generally conform to the normative range, but more data are needed from Chinese societies. In an attempt to remedy this situation, this paper investigates normative life satisfaction there. This paper reanalyses published and unpublished data from various Chinese societies (People’s Republic of China, Hong Kong, Macau, Singapore, and Taiwan) in order to confirm whether or not they lie within the normative range for non-Western countries. The results provide support for the relevance of Cummins’s normative range in Chinese societies. That the normative range generalised to the present study is a very useful finding, as it supports its utility for Chinese samples, and adds support to a theoretical explanation – i.e. the Wellbeing Homeostatisis theory—in Chinese groups.     

Priming Effects in Measuring Life Satisfaction

Life satisfaction, as an indicator of subjective well-being, has received increasing attention in the recent decades. It has become a potential indicator of development, to be used complementary to objective measures. However, no clear consensus exists on the relationship between life satisfaction and satisfaction with the various domains of life as well as on the measurement of life satisfaction. This paper addresses the relationship between overall life satisfaction and domain satisfaction (DS). The objective is to identify potential biases induced by priming effects when measuring DS. Four types of theoretical models, derived from existing literature, are tested in different scenarios. Data from three waves of the European Quality of Life Surveys are analyzed using a structural equation modeling framework to provide empirical evidence. An original experimental design is employed to demonstrate that priming effects cannot be ignored. A comparison of models including priming effects and those ignoring such biases shows that the former is a better fit and has higher propensity to explain the variations in life satisfaction and DS.