Testing a New Operationalization of the Basic Values on Estonian- and Russian-speaking Subpopulations in Estonia

The theory of basic human value developed by Shalom Schwartz has held a dominant place in the field of value studies for at least two decades. Despite of some modest adaptations, the theory has maintained its original form. Still, an increasing number of critical discussions have recently been published throwing doubt upon universality of its inner structure (e.g. Mohler and Wohn in Persönliche Wertorientierungen im European Social Survey, ZUMA-Arbeitsbericht, 2005; Clercq 2006; Perrinjaquet et al. in J Res Pers 41:820–840, 2007; Davidov and Schmidt in Measuring meaningful data in social research, Acco, Leuven, pp 373–386, 2007; Davidov et al. in Public Opin Quart 72:420–445, 2008; Davidov in Surv Res Methods 2:33–46, 2008; Knoppen and Saris in Surv Res Methods 3:91–103, 2009a; Knoppen and Saris 2009b; Fischer et al. in J Cross Cult Psychol 41:135–151, 2010). Most of these studies have proposed that the shortcomings of that model can be improved through unification of some adjacent value types (e.g. Davidov and Schmidt in Measuring meaningful data in social research, Acco, Leuven, pp 373–386, 2007; Davidov et al. in Public Opin Quart 72:420–445, 2008; Davidov in Surv Res Methods 2:33–46, 2008). However, Knoppen and Saris (Surv Res Methods 3:91–103, 2009a; Knoppen and Saris 2009b) have showed that the given grouping of factors was a consequence of misspecifications in the model and proposed an alternative structure with 19 value types, which has been largely confirmed by several recent papers (Cieciuch and Schwartz in J Pers Assess 94:321–328, 2012; Beierlein et al. in Surv Res Methods 6:25–36, 2012). Current study will also test the new model, but contrarily to cited papers, a representative national sample is used, which raises the robustness of findings. The data is from Estonia and collected in late 2008. Due to the existence of large ethnic minority in Estonian society, the sample allows additionally testing the equivalence of the measurement in the two subpopulations. This study shows that the alternative value-structure, proposed by Knoppen and Saris, applies well to the representative Estonian data.     

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.     

Personality Traits and Subjective Well-Being: Moderating Role of Optimism in University Employees

The present study examined the moderating impact of optimism on the relationship between personality traits (neuroticism and conscientiousness) and subjective well-being (distress and satisfaction with life) among university employees. Participants were 251 (age 25–60) employees at COMSATS University, who completed demographic information sheet, two subscales (neuroticism and conscientiousness) of NEO Personality Inventory (Costa et al. in Br J Psychol 78:299–306, 1987), Life Orientation Test-Revised (Scheier et al. in J Pers Soc Psychol 67:1063–1078, 1994), Satisfaction with Life Scale (Dienere et al. in J Persy Assess 49:71–75, 1985), and two subscales (depression and anxiety) of Brief Symptom Inventory (Derogatis and Melisaratos in Psychol Med 13:595–605, 1983). On a final sample of 251 university employees, a series of moderated hierarchical regression analyses were performed separately for positive and negative health outcomes. Results indicated that optimism moderated between neuroticism and distress and neuroticism and satisfaction with life. Further, optimism moderated between conscientiousness and distress and conscientiousness and satisfaction with life. The current findings have implications for clinicians, researchers, and policy makers for the identification of resource factors that may help to understand the resistant power of non clinical sample to maintain positive functioning.     

Richer in Money, Poorer in Relationships and Unhappy? Time Series Comparisons of Social Capital and Well-Being in Luxembourg

The worrying decline of social capital (Putnam in Bowling alone: the collapse and revival of American community. Simon and Schuster, New York, 2000) and the disappointing trends of subjective well-being characterising the US (Easterlin in Nations and households in economic growth. Academic Press, New York, 1974; Easterlin and Angelescu in Happiness and growth the world over: time series evidence on the happiness-income paradox, 2009; Easterlin et al. in Proc Natl Acad Sci 107:22463–22468, 2010) raise urgent questions for modern societies: is the erosion of social capital a feature of the more developed and richer countries or is it rather a characteristic aspect of the American society? To test the hypothesis that the erosion of social capital and declining well-being are not a common feature of richer countries, present work focuses on Luxembourg. The main results are: (1) the erosion of social capital is not a legacy of the richest countries in the world; (2) between 1999 and 2008, people in Luxembourg experienced a substantial increase in almost every proxy of social capital; (3) both endowments and trends of social capital and subjective well-being differ significantly within the population. Migrants participate less in social relationships and report lower levels of well-being; (4) the positive relationship between trends of subjective well-being and social capital found in previous literature is confirmed.     

Evaluating the Link Between Perceived Income Adequacy and Financial Satisfaction: A Resource Deficit Hypothesis Approach

Data from an economically and racially diverse sample (N = 258) was used to determine (a) if an association between objectively measured income and perceived income adequacy exists, (b) how well individuals assess the adequacy of their income, and (c) if a bias exists, can these estimates be used to describe a person’s overall level of financial satisfaction? Duesenberry’s (Income, saving, and the theory of consumer behavior. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, 1949) relative income hypothesis and Kyrk’s (The family in the American economy. University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1953) resource deficit hypothesis were adopted for use as the conceptual framework for this study. A positive but modest association between objective and perceived income adequacy was noted. It was also found that individuals do not do a particularly good job of accurately assessing their income adequacy. Finally, perceived income adequacy estimation bias was found to be associated with financial satisfaction. Those who perceived their income to be deficient were less satisfied financially. Policy and practitioner implications from the study are discussed as a means for improving financial satisfaction at the individual and household level.     

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.     

Point and interval forecasts of age-specific fertility rates: a comparison of functional principal component methods

Accurate forecasts of age-specific fertility rates are critical for government policy, planning and decision making. With the availability of the Human Fertility Database (2011), the paper compares the empirical accuracy of the point and interval forecasts, obtained by the approach of Hyndman and Ullah (Comput Stat Data Anal 51(10), 4942?C4956, 2007) and its variants for forecasting age-specific fertility rates. The analyses are carried out using the age-specific fertility data of 15 mostly developed countries. Based on the one-step-ahead to 20-step-ahead forecast error measures, the weighted Hyndman-Ullah method provides the most accurate point and interval forecasts for forecasting age-specific fertility rates, among all the methods we investigated.     

Monitoring Human Development Goals: A Straightforward (Bayesian) Methodology for Cross-National Indices

We offer a straightforward framework for measurement of progress, across many dimensions, using cross-national social indices, which we classify as linear combinations of multivariate country level data onto a univariate score. We suggest a Bayesian approach which yields probabilistic (confidence type) intervals for the point estimates of country scores—a vital, and often missing, feature in cross-national comparisons. We demonstrate our approach using the United Nations Development Programme’s Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), via the Maternal and Neonatal Program Effort Index (MNPI) data (Ross et al. in Trop Med Inter Health 6(10):787–798, 2001), and Human Development Index (HDI) (2010) as examples.     

Climbing up the Social Ladders: Identity, Relative Income, and Subjective Well-being

This study incorporates the concept of identity to explain the relationship between relative income and subjective well-being. Based upon the theoretical framework of an identity model developed by Akerlof and Kranton Q J Econ 115:715–753, (2000), the empirical findings of this study suggest that an increase in relative income leads to a gain in positional identity and therefore raises the level of subjective well-being. This approach extends our understanding about the connection between positional concern and subjective well-being and explains the importance of social comparison in shaping individuals’ preferences and tastes. People are concerned about their relative income as it represents a positional identity of social status, dependent upon ideals and norms derived from the interactions between an individual and others within a society.     

Choices Which Change Life Satisfaction: Similar Results for Australia, Britain and Germany

Using data from national socio-economic panel surveys in Australia, Britain and Germany, this paper analyzes the effects of individual preferences and choices on subjective well-being (SWB). It is shown that, in all three countries, preferences and choices relating to life goals/values, partner’s personality, hours of work, social participation and healthy lifestyle have substantial and similar effects on life satisfaction. The results have negative implications for a widely accepted theory of SWB, set-point theory. This theory holds that adult SWB is stable in the medium and long term, although temporary fluctuations occur due to life events. Set-point theory has come under increasing criticism in recent years, primarily due to unmistakable evidence in the German Socio-Economic Panel that, during the last 25 years, over a third of the population has recorded substantial and apparently permanent changes in life satisfaction (Fujita and Diener in J Pers Soc Psychol 88:158–64, 2005; Headey in Soc Indic Res 85:389–403, 2008a; Headey et al. in Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 107(42):17922–17926, 2010). It is becoming clear that the main challenge now for SWB researchers is to develop new explanations which can account for medium and long term change, and not merely stability in SWB. Set-point theory is limited precisely because it is purely a theory of stability. The paper is based on specially constructed panel survey files in which data are divided into multi-year periods in order to facilitate analysis of medium and long term change.     

Parents Transmit Happiness Along with Associated Values and Behaviors to Their Children: A Lifelong Happiness Dividend?

There are strong two-way links between parent and child happiness (life satisfaction), even for ‘children’ who have grown up, moved to their own home and partnered themselves. German panel evidence shows that transmission of (un)happiness from parents to children is partly due to transmission of values and behaviors known to be associated with happiness (Headey et al. in Proc Natl Acad Sci 107(42):17922–17926, 2010, in Soc Indic Res doi:10.1007/s11205-012-0079-8,2012). These values and behaviors include giving priority to pro-social and family values, rather than material values, maintaining a preferred balance between work and leisure, active social and community participation, and regular exercise. Both parents have about equal influence on the values and behaviors which children adopt. However, the life satisfaction of adult ‘children’ continues to be directly influenced by the life satisfaction of their mothers, with the influence of fathers being only indirect, via transmission of values and behaviors. There appears to be a lifelong happiness dividend (or unhappiness dividend) due to parenting. Structural equation models with two-way causation indicate that the life satisfaction of offspring can significantly affect the satisfaction of their parents, as well as vice versa, long after the ‘children’ have left home. Data come from 25 waves of the German Socio-Economic Panel Survey (SOEP 1984–2008). SOEP is the only panel survey worldwide in which data on life satisfaction have been obtained from parents and an adequate sub-sample of children no longer living in the parental home.     

On the ‘Urbanness’ of Metropolitan Areas: Testing the Homogeneity Assumption, 1970–2000

In recent decades, population dynamics, have made definitions of what localities are rural or urban somewhat unclear. The vast majority of demographic work has simply used metropolitan classifications with various forms of a non-metropolitan residual (e.g., adjacent to metro versus non-adjacent). The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) periodically redefines metropolitan areas, which makes temporal comparisons difficult. In fact, some demographers have offered the idea that, due to these shifting reclassifications, the so-called “rural rebound” is a misnomer, in that non-metropolitan counties that transitioned to metropolitan status were, in fact, already more ‘urban’ than those that did not become reclassified as metropolitan (Johnson et al 2005). This argument depends largely on the assumption of homogeneity in rural or urban ‘character’ in those counties. Following arguments by others (Wilkinson 1991; Isserman 2001; Bogue 1950), we take population and land use into account to examine whether these transitional counties were more or less urban than comparable others, all at the county level for the contiguous 48 states for 1970–2000. Our results show that adjacent non-metropolitan counties that were later reclassified as metropolitan were indeed characterized by a larger population and heavier urban land cover than those not making this transition. However, the results also show that metropolitan areas were also quite heterogeneous in terms of traditionally rural activities. A discussion of the homogeneity assumption in demographers’ conceptualization of metropolitan areas is included.     

Does Weather Really Influence the Measurement of Life Satisfaction?

Since the beginning of the nineties, a number of studies indicate that weather conditions at interview day can have an effect on measurement, in particular regarding life satisfaction. In their seminal paper, Schwarz and Clore (J Pers Soc Psychol 45(3):513–523, 1983) show higher reported life satisfaction for sunny days, a finding which is replicated recently by Kämpfer and Mutz (Soc Indic Res 110(2):579–595, 2013). However, both studies are based on relatively small samples (from a few dozen up to 200 cases). We use data of the German Family Panel (pairfam) and local weather data for every respondent to investigate if weather effects on satisfaction measurement can be replicated with a large sample (about 7,000 respondents). In addition to cross-sectional analyses in which we follow closely the approach of Kämpfer and Mutz, we estimate fixed effects regressions to model the effect of weather on individual changes in satisfaction over time. We do neither find an effect of nice weather on the day of the interview on the respondents’ ratings of general life satisfaction nor a consistent effect on any of the other satisfaction measures. These results show that at least with simple weather measures as they have been used as yet a relationship between weather conditions at interview day and answering behavior regarding life satisfaction cannot be found.     

Is Greece a Rent Seeking Society? A Research on the Relationship Between Entrepreneurship,Trust and Institutions

The paper analyses the various interactions among the institutional and cultural environment and the quality of entrepreneurial activity in Greece. The institutional context and the way in which institutions perform in particular, shape the structure of entrepreneurial incentives. As explicitly demonstrated by Baumol (J Political Econ 98:893–921, 1990) institutions actually channel entrepreneurial talent toward different activities which may be productive, unproductive or destructive. At the same time, informal institutions, i.e. culture and values have proven to be of equal importance for entrepreneurship. Within this context, the paper builds a simple model of rewards’ satisfaction accounting for first, the existence of income externalities, in order to test the hypothesis that individuals care about their relative position, i.e. economic status, and second, for the institutional quality, trust and values pertaining in the society, in order to analyze the possible existence of an underlying ‘social consensus’ that is supportive of rent-seeking behavior in Greece.     

How Cognitive Interviewing can Provide Validity Evidence of the Response Processes to Scale Items

The current theory about validity reflected in the Standards for Educational and Psychological Testing (AERA et al. in Standards for educational and psychological testing, American Psychological Association, Washington, DC, 1999), offers no clear indications about the methods for gathering validity evidence about the response processes. Cognitive interviewing (CI) can play an important role answering the current demand about empirical and theoretical analyses of the response processes as a source of validity evidence in psychological testing. CI can provide validity evidence for investigating substantive aspects of construct validity and for contributing to the explanations for item and test scores (Zumbo in Handbook of statistics, vol 26, Elsevier, Amsterdam, pp. 45–79, 2007; The concept of validity: revisions, new directions and applications, IAP—Information Age Publishing Inc., Charlotte, NC, pp. 65–82, 2009). The aim of the study was to illustrate the use of cognitive interviewing method for gathering validity evidence on response processes. The search for evidence about the “response process” was guided by an argument-based approach to validity (Kane in Psychological Bulletin 1992; Educational measurement, American Council on Education/Praeger, Washington, DC, pp. 17–64, 2006). 21 cognitive interviews were carried out during the cognitive testing of the APGAR psychological scale intended to measure the “family support” construct. Cognitive interviewing provided validity evidence that explains how respondents interpret and respond to the APGAR items. Respondents maintained a shared interpretation of “family concept” while answering the APGAR scale items. Nevertheless, they included in the concept of family not only family members they live with but also other family members and even friends. CI participants were also capable of classifying their answers about the family support perception following a polythomous response system. Lastly, the role of CI in the Kane’s argument-based approach and Zumbo’s contextualized view of validity will be discussed.     

A New Framework of Happiness Survey and Evaluation of National Wellbeing

Happiness surveys based on self-reporting may generate unreliable data due to respondents?? imperfect retrospection, vulnerability to context and arbitrariness in measuring happiness. To overcome these problems, this paper proposes to combine a happiness evaluation method developed by Ng (Soc Indic Res, 38:1?C29, 1996) with the day reconstruction method developed by Kahneman et al. (Science 306:1776?C1780, 2004a) to form a new happiness survey procedure. Distinguished from other surveys that ask respondents to rate their subjective wellbeing on a given scale, this happiness evaluation method provides detailed instructions to help each respondent determine a personal unit and use this unit to measure happiness in various occasions. While the day reconstruction method helps avoid the effects of imperfect retrospection and external disturbances, this new procedure can further reduce arbitrariness in self-reported measures and derive more accurate, intertemporally and interpersonally comparable happiness metrics. How to evaluate national wellbeing based on the data collected from such a survey is also demonstrated.     

Detecting Unobserved Heterogeneity in the Relationship Between Subjective Well-Being and Satisfaction in Various Domains of Life Using the REBUS-PLS Path Modelling Approach: A Case Study

In this article, we propose a model to estimate the direct and indirect effects of the relationship between subjective well-being and satisfaction in various domains of life using a partial least squares path modelling approach in a structural equation model framework. A drawback of these models is that they assume homogeneous behaviour over the observed set of units. To address this issue, Trinchera (Ph.D. thesis, University of Naples, 2007) and Esposito Vinzi et al. (Appl Stoch Models Bus Ind 28:439–458, 2008) proposed an algorithm, called the response-based unit segmentation in partial least squares (REBUS-PLS) path modelling, to detect sources of heterogeneity in both measurement and structural models. The REBUS-PLS allows researchers to identify classes of units with similar behaviours (with respect to the postulated model) and to estimate one model for each identified class (so-called ‘local models’). Applying the REBUS-PLS algorithm to our case study, we detected three main classes of units with similar behaviours and estimated three local models. We found, for example, that in the estimated model for the entire sample, the relationship between satisfaction with family and social life and subjective well-being is statistically significant. However, this result was not confirmed in all of the estimated local models.     

Can higher life expectancy induce more schooling and earlier retirement?

In this paper, we show that it may be optimal for individuals to educate more and retire earlier when life expectancy increases. This result reconciles the findings of Hazan (Econometrica 77:1829–1863, 2009) with theory. Further, the paper contributes to a better understanding of the conflicting empirical findings on the causal effect on income per capita from increased life expectancy.     

Individual Differences in Social Comparison and its Consequences for Life Satisfaction: Introducing a Short Scale of the Iowa–Netherlands Comparison Orientation Measure

Research in social psychology has shown individual variation in the tendency to compare one’s own opinions and abilities with those of other people, raising the question of whether social comparisons are psychological dispositions. To test the empirical validity of this proposition, Gibbons and Buunk (1999) created an instrument, the Iowa–Netherlands Comparison Orientation Measure (INCOM), that measures the tendency to engage in social comparison and captures central aspects of the self and the other. This paper analyzes the reliability and validity of the INCOM scale for the German population and discusses potentials for shortening the instrument for continued use in large-scale population surveys. Interdependencies between psychological and structural characteristics are investigated and consequences for life satisfaction discussed. The results show evidence that individuals systematically vary in their orientation towards social comparison.