Psychometric Evaluation of a Serbian Version of the Subjective Happiness Scale

The main aim of this research was to examine the psychometric properties of the Subjective Happiness Scale (SHS; Lyubomirsky and Lepper in Soc Indic Res 46:137–155, 1999) in a sample of young adults in Serbia (N = 605, mean age = 21.99). The SHS demonstrated adequate internal consistency reliability and homogeneity. Exploratory and Confirmatory factor analyses supported the unidimensional structure of the SHS. The results provided support for the convergent validity of the SHS, by significant correlations with measures of subjective well-being (life satisfaction, positive and negative affect, emotional distress), positive expectations (optimism and self-efficacy), meaning in life and personality traits (extraversion and neuroticism). As compared to the Satisfaction with Life Scale, the SHS showed significantly higher correlations with measures of emotional states and personality traits. Hierarchical regression analyses showed that the SHS had incremental validity over and above subjective well-being and personality traits in predicting emotional distress and meaning in life.     

The Subjective Happiness Scale: Translation and Preliminary Psychometric Evaluation of a Spanish Version

The aim of the present study was to investigate the psychometric properties of the Spanish version of the Subjective Happiness Scale (Lyubomirsky and Lepper in Soc Indic Res 46:137–155, 1999) in a wide sample of 1,155 participants (448 men, 707 women) from three different groups (high school students, college students, and community adult participants). The participants completed the following measures: the Spanish version of SHS, the Satisfaction with Life Scale, the Beck Depression Inventory and the Spielberger Trait Anxiety Inventory. The results revealed preliminary evidence of adequate internal consistency, appropriate test–retest reliability and convergent validity for research purposes. Also, results from confirmatory factor analyses showed a clear one-factor structure, identical with the English version. No significant sex effects were evidenced, although differences between the high school student group and the undergraduate university group were found. In general, our findings add empirical evidence of the usefulness of such a brief measure for the assessment of subjective happiness in large-scale national and international studies with native Spanish-speaking populations. Finally, practical recommendations and future lines of research are suggested.     

Psychometric Properties of the Flourishing Scale in a New Zealand Sample

The Flourishing Scale (FS; Diener et al. in Soc Indic Res 97(2):143–156, 2010) was developed to assess psychological flourishing, which can be conceived of as a social-psychological prosperity incorporating important aspects of human functioning. This study takes the FS, which has previously been validated on convenience samples of students, and analyses the underlying structure, psychometric properties, and demographic norms using nationally-representative data from New Zealand’s Sovereign Wellbeing Index (n = 10,009; Human Potential Centre in Sovereign Wellbeing Index: New Zealand’s first measure of wellbeing. Auckland University of Technology, Auckland, 2013). Evidence for the reliability and validity of the FS is presented (Cronbach alpha) and its performance compared to other related scales and behaviors. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis demonstrated the one factor structure of the 8-item FS. Contemporary population norms for the FS are reported, providing a much-needed benchmark for estimation of population health and permitting cross-study and international comparisons. The study provides further evidence that the FS is a valid and reliable brief summary measure of psychological functioning, suited for use with a wide range of age groups and applications.     

Nowcasting Indicators of Poverty Risk in the European Union: A Microsimulation Approach

The at-risk-of-poverty rate is one of the three indicators used for monitoring progress towards the Europe 2020 poverty and social exclusion reduction target. Timeliness of this indicator is critical for monitoring the effectiveness of policies. However, due to complicated nature of the European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions (EU-SILC) poverty risk estimates are published with a 2–3 years delay. This paper presents a method that can be used to estimate (“nowcast”) the current at-risk-of-poverty rate for the European Union (EU) countries based on EU-SILC microdata from a previous period. The EU tax-benefit microsimulation model EUROMOD is used for this purpose in combination with up to date macro-level statistics. The method is validated by using EU-SILC data for 2007 incomes to estimate at-risk-of-poverty rates for 2008–2012 and to compare the predictions with actual EU-SILC and other external statistics. The method is tested on eight EU countries which are among those experiencing the most volatile economic conditions within the period: Estonia, Greece, Spain, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Portugal and Romania.     

Religion and Gender Equality Worldwide: A Country-Level Analysis

Conceptually, the Satisfaction with Life Scale (SWLS; Diener et al. in J Pers Assess 49(1):71–75, 1985) emphasizes evaluations comparing actual and expected life circumstances. Contrastingly we developed the Harmony in Life Scale (HILS) emphasizing psychological balance and flexibility in life. Study 1 (476 participants) developed the HILS. In Study 2 participants (N = 787, T1; N = 545, T2) answered well-being related questionnaires and generated words/texts related to HIL/SWL. The HILS yields satisfactory statistical properties, correlates as expected to well-being related scales, whilst HIL/SWL form a two-factor model. Hierarchical regressions reveal that HILS explains considerably more unique variance than SWLS in most included measures. Quantitative semantic analyses (employing latent semantic analyses) on words related to HIL/SWL reveal that they differ significantly in their semantic content. Word frequency analyses show that harmony significantly relate to peace, balance, etc. and satisfaction with job, money, etc. The HILS demonstrates validity, reliability, and uniqueness complementing the SWLS in forming a more holistic understanding of subjective well-being.     

Long-term dynamics of household size and their environmental implications

Little is known about the environmental implications of long-term historical trends in household size. This paper presents the first historical assessment of global shifts in average household size based on a variety of datasets covering the period 1600–2000. Findings reveal that developed nations reached a threshold in 1893 when average household size began to drop rapidly from approximately 5.0 to 2.5. A similar threshold was reached in developing nations in 1987. With the notable exceptions of Ireland, and England and Wales in the early 1800s, and India and the Seychelles in the late 1900s, the number of households grew faster than population size in every country and every time period. These findings suggest accommodating housing may continue to pose one of the greatest environmental challenges of the twenty-first century because the impacts of increased housing present a threat to sustainability even when population growth slows. Future research addressing environmental impacts of declining household size could use an adapted IPAT model, I = PHoG: where environmental impact (I) = population × personal goods (P) + households × household goods (HoG).     

Occupational Stratification of Hispanics,Whites, and Blacks in Southern Rural Destinations: A Quantitative Analysis

Since the 1990s, many rural communities in the Southern US have experienced an unprecedented influx of Latino migrants. Some research undertaken on such “new Hispanic destinations” suggests that the newcomers tend to assume low-status jobs shunned by non-Hispanic residents and thus form a segmented labor market, but other work indicates that they heavily compete with natives (particularly African Americans) for less-skilled positions. Drawing on data from the 2000 census and 2009–2011 American Community Survey, this paper examines patterns of occupational stratification between Latino, white, and black men in the rural South to identify whether Hispanic economic relations in the area are better characterized by segmentation or competition. Specifically, occupational dissimilarity indexes and status scores are calculated to map the groups’ relative economic positions in the rural portions of five Southeastern states home to fast-growing nonmetro Latino populations: Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, North Carolina, and South Carolina. Consistent with the segmentation hypothesis, the results reveal that Latinos are highly occupationally dissimilar from non-Hispanic whites and blacks and rank significantly below both in mean occupational status. Standardization of the stratification measures shows that Hispanics’ labor market isolation and disadvantage can be substantially accounted for by their lower average levels of human capital and US citizenship.     

Validating the Portuguese Version of the Satisfaction With Life Scale in an Elderly Sample

Life satisfaction is referred to a cognitive, judgmental process (Diener et al. in J Pers Assess 49:71–75, 1985), in which person’s quality of life is globally assessed according to his/her chosen criteria (Shin and Johnson in Soc Indic res 5:475–492, 1978). Thus, life satisfaction is a conscious cognitive judgment, based on the comparison of one’s life with a self-imposed standard or set of standards, which lead to a global assessment of life (Pavot and Diener in Psychol Assess 5:164–172, 1993). Among the many scales developed to measure life satisfaction, the Satisfaction With Life Scale (SWLS, Diener et al. in J Pers Assess 49:71–75, 1985) is one of the global life satisfaction scales more often used in the research arena. It is composed of five items assessing global life satisfaction, using a Likert type response format. The aim of this paper is to validate the Portuguese version of the SWLS via confirmatory factor analysis, with a sample of 1,003 elderly from Angola. Reliability, factorial and criterial validity estimates are presented. Overall, the results shown that the scale had an adequate one-factor confirmatory solution, satisfying reliability indices, and adequate criterion-related validity when assessed in a sample of Angolan elderly. The discussion relates the results with existing literature and posits the contributions of the paper: firstly, it offers the researchers on life satisfaction in Portuguese-speaking contexts a brief, self-rated measure of satisfaction with life that has sound psychometric properties, validity, and reliability; secondly, it is the first confirmatory validation of the scale in Portuguese.     

Religious Affiliation and Fertility in a Sub-Saharan Context: Dynamic and Lifetime Perspectives

We use uniquely detailed data from a predominantly Christian high-fertility area in Mozambique to examine denominational differentials in fertility from two complementary perspectives—dynamic and cumulative. First, we use event-history analysis to predict yearly risks of birth from denominational affiliation. Then, we employ Poisson regression to model the association between the number of children ever born and share of reproductive life spent in particular denominations or outside organized religion. Both approaches detect a significant increase in fertility associated with membership in a particular type of African-initiated churches which is characterized by strong organizational identity, rigid hierarchy, and insular corporate culture. Membership in the Catholic Church is also associated with elevated completed fertility. We relate these results to extant theoretical perspectives on the relationship between religion and fertility by stressing the interplay between ideological, social, and organizational characteristics of different types of churches and situate our findings within the context of fertility transition and religious demographics in Mozambique and elsewhere in sub-Saharan Africa.     

Measuring Advances in Equality of Opportunity: The Changing Gender Gap in Educational Attainment in Canada in the Last Half Century

The notion of Equality of Opportunity (EO) has pervaded much of economic and social justice policy over the last half century in conveying a sense of liberation from the circumstances that constrain an individual’s ability to achieve it, and it has been a cornerstone of many gender equality programs. However unequivocal pursuit of the so called “Luck Egalitarianism” imperative has met with many critics who question why individuals who are blessed with good circumstances would wish to be “liberated” from them. This has led to a more qualified pursuit of Equal Opportunity which adds an additional proviso—that no circumstance group should be made worse off by such a policy or decentralized private initiative. Indeed observed practices, by focusing on the opportunities of the poorly endowed in circumstance, do accord with such a qualified Equal Opportunity mandate. Here it is contended that, because of the asymmetric nature of such a policy or initiative, existing empirical techniques will not fully capture the progress made toward an EO goal. Hence a new technique is introduced and employed in examining progress toward such a Qualified Equal Opportunity (QEO) Objective in the context of the educational attainments of Canadian males and females born between the 1920s and the 1970s (In the early part of that century, females did not perform as well as males educationally, and were much more constrained by their parental educational circumstance). A QEO goal is generally found to cohere with the data with females becoming less attached to their parental educational circumstance, and indeed surpassing males in their educational attainments.     

Can Well-Being be Measured Using Facebook Status Updates? Validation of Facebook’s Gross National Happiness Index

Facebook’s Gross National Happiness (FGNH) indexes the positive and negative words used in the millions of status updates submitted daily by Facebook users. FGNH has face validity: it shows a weekly cycle and increases on national holidays. Also, happier individuals use more positive words and fewer negative words in their status updates (Kramer 2010). We examined the validity of FGNH in measuring mood and well-being by comparing it with scores on Diener’s Satisfaction with Life Scale (SWLS), administered to an average of 34 Facebook users every day for a year, then aggregated by day, week, month, quarter and half year. FGNH and SWLS were not significantly correlated, with a negative correlation coefficient. Also, aggregated SWLS scores showed a positive relationship with numbers of negative words in status updates. We conclude that FGNH is a valid measure for neither mood nor well-being; however, it may play a role in mood regulation. This challenges the assumption that linguistic analysis of internet messages is related to underlying psychological states.     

The Effect of Imputation Procedures on First Birth Intervals: Evidence from Five African Fertility Surveys

In most African societies there is little motivation to remember dates of demographic events with the level of precision required in demographic surveys. Consequently it is common that the large majority of survey respondents can provide only the calendar year of occurrence or their age at the time of the event. The World Fertility Survey Group decided to handle the problem of poor date reporting by using a computer program to impute the missing information. This article illustrates the effect of these imputation procedures on cross-national differentials in the proportion of premarital first births in Benin, Cameroon, Cote d’Ivoire, Ghana, and Nigeria. The analysis demonstrates that the exceptionally low proportion of premarital first births in Ghana is an artifact of the imputation procedures.     

A pilot study in the use of the quality of life interview schedule

The purpose of this study was to refine the Quality of Life Interview Schedule (QUOLIS¢) approach to measuring the quality of life of developmentally handicapped adults who are unable to complete a written questionnaire or a verbal interview. Emphasis was placed on the evaluation of intra- and inter-rater agreement. Ten interviews were conducted. Informants were primarily parents and residential counselors. The results indicate that the QUOLIS¢ approach is generally acceptable to informants, the rating scales are sensitive, and the majority of scores have substantial to almost perfect correlations of intra- and inter-rater agreement.     

Socioeconomic Status,Income Inequality,and Health Complaints: A Basic Psychological Needs Perspective

Socioeconomic status (SES) and income inequality are now recognized as important determinants of health, and there is growing interest in uncovering the intermediary psychosocial pathways through which the socioeconomic context affects physical well-being (Marmot in The status syndrome: how social standing affects our health and longevity, Henry Holt, New York, 2004; Wilkinson and Pickett in The Spirit Level: why more equal societies almost always do better, Allen Lane, London, 2009). We adopted the applied framework of self-determination theory (SDT; Deci and Ryan in Psychol Inq 11:227–268, 2000) and hypothesized that fulfillment of the basic psychological needs for autonomy, competence, and relatedness would mediate the relationships that SES and income inequality have to self-rated health. An online community sample of American participants (N = 1,139) completed a detailed demographic survey and provided self-reports of need fulfillment and health complaints. Structural equation models controlled for impression management and self-deceptive enhancement. Controlling for sex and age, need fulfillment was predicted positively by subjective SES and objective household income and negatively by state-level income inequality; in turn, need fulfillment predicted lower levels of health complaints. These findings suggest that SDT provides a useful framework for the study of SES, income inequality, and health, and that basic psychological needs are an important mechanism through which socioeconomic contexts influence health.     

Health-Related Quality of Life of Chinese Earthquake Survivors: A Case Study of Five Hard-Hit Disaster Counties in Sichuan

As one of the most destructive natural disasters, earthquakes affect the health of survivors. The devastating earthquakes that hit Sichuan, China have aroused the concern of domestic and international scholars. The health-related quality of life (HRQOL) of survivors also requires substantial research. Studies on impact factors, such as gender, age, monthly income, and education, have become controversial. The subjects in this study are the people of five hard-hit disaster counties in Sichuan Province, namely, Wenchuan, Qingchuan, Mianzhu, Lushan, and Dujiangyan. A preliminary survey was conducted in May and June 2013 in areas badly hit by the earthquake in Sichuan, China. A total of 2000 questionnaires were distributed, and 1672 of which were received, yielding a recovery rate of 83.6 %. To further complement and corroborate the conclusions, a follow-up survey was conducted in October and November 2013, where 1526 effective questionnaires were received. The analysis in this paper is mainly based on the first survey, and the collected data from the follow-up survey were used to perform a supplementary analysis. By analyzing data from five hard-hit areas in Sichuan and by establishing models, we drew the following conclusions: The results of analysis of variance and Tukey’s honestly significant difference tests revealed the following results. First, the results of two investigations indicate the HRQOL of earthquake survivors is relatively poor, especially in terms of general health (GH), mental health (MH), social functioning (SF), etc. However, results of the second survey indicate that the scores of all domains (except GH) have increased significantly, with the SF having the most significant increase. Second, the HRQOL scores of men are higher than those of women. Individuals with higher education or monthly income have higher HRQOL scores than those with lower education or income. Moreover, younger survivors have higher HRQOL scores than older survivors. Third, a positive correlation exists among the HRQOL domains of all survivors. Among all domains, the PF, RP, GH, MH, and VT of survivors have a very strong correlation. In addition, SF, BP, MH, and VT have a strong correlation. Other variables have a relatively weak correlation.     

Reliability and Validity of an Adapted Version of the Cantril Ladder for Use with Adolescent Samples

There are a number of measures of life satisfaction for use with adolescent samples. The adapted Cantril Ladder is one such measure. This has been collected by the Health Behaviour in School-aged Children (HBSC) study in HBSC member countries across Europe and North America for several survey cycles, dating back to 2002. Although this measure has been piloted in the HBSC member countries, and analysed and reported in several international scientific journals and reports, it has never been formally validated. This study aims to be a first step in validating the adapted Cantril Ladder to establish if it is fit for purpose in the measurement of global life satisfaction among adolescents in Scotland. The study found that across samples of 11–15 year old pupils, the Cantril Ladder showed good reliability, and among 11 year olds, better than that of the Students’ Life Satisfaction Scale, an often used measure in adolescent samples. The Cantril Ladder also showed good convergent validity with other emotional well-being measures, perceived health and subjective health. Gender differences were noted in the convergent analysis suggesting gender differences in factors influencing or influenced by life satisfaction measured using this instrument.     

Legal Status and the Stability of Coresidential Unions

Using data from the National Longitudinal Study of the High School Class of 1972, we examine the effect of the legal status of coresidential unions on the likelihood of dissolution. We find that legal unions are much more stable than nonlegal unions. In addition, current legal status is more important for predicting stability of union than is legal status at the initiation of the union. We also find that the effect of current legal status remains constant over various durations of unions and that legalizing a nonlegal union has little effect beyond that expected on the basis of a occupying a particular legal status.     

Research Note: US Census Same-Sex Couple Data: Adjustments to Reduce Measurement Error and Empirical Implications

US Census same-sex couple data represent one of the richest and most frequently used data resources for studying the LGBT population. Recently, the Census Bureau conducted an analysis of a serious measurement problem in these data, finding that as many as 40 % of same-sex couples tabulated in Census 2000 and 28 % of those tabulated in Census 2010 were likely misclassified different-sex couples (O’Connell and Feliz, Bureau of the Census, 2011). As a result, the Census Bureau released new state-level “preferred” estimates for the number of same-sex couples in these years, as well as previously unavailable information regarding the error rate of sex misclassification among different-sex married and unmarried couples by state and year. Researchers can use this information to adjust same-sex couple tabulations for geographic areas below the state level. Using these resources, this study: (1) considers in greater detail how the properties of the same-sex couple error might affect statistical inference, (2) offers a method for developing sub-state estimates of same-sex couples, and (3) demonstrates how using adjusted estimates can improve inference in analyses that rely on understanding the distribution of same-sex couples. In order to accomplish the third task, we replicate an analysis by McVeigh and Diaz (American Sociological Review 74: 891–915, 2009) that used county level Census 2000 unadjusted same-sex couple data, substitute our adjusted same-sex couple estimate, and examine the way in which this substitution affects findings. Our results demonstrate the improved accuracy of the adjusted measure and provide the formula that researchers can use to adjust the same-sex couple distribution in future analyses.     

Convergence on the two-child family norm in Australia

This paper examines childbearing patterns of ever-married women in Australia and establishes that during the process of fertility transition from high to low levels which largely began after 1971, significant changes occurred in the timing of the first birth after marriage, the length of the first and inter-birth intervals and the proportion of women progressing to have a first birth or births beyond the second. The analysis also confirms the predominance of the twochild family norm and shows the emergence of a converging trend on that family norm. The study applies the life tables technique to the marriage and birth history data collected in the Family Formation Survey conducted by the ABS in September 1986.