The structure of subjective well-being in nine western societies

The structure of subjective well-being is analyzed by multidimensional mapping of evaluations of life concerns. For example, one finds that evaluations of Income are close to (i.e., relatively strongly related to) evaluations of Standard of living, but remote from (weakly related to) evaluations of Health. These structures show how evaluations of life components fit together and hence illuminate the psychological meaning of life quality. They can be useful for determining the breadth of coverage and degree of redundancy of social indicators of perceived well-being. Analyzed here are data from representative sample surveys in Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Great Britain, Ireland, Italy, Netherlands, and the United States (each N≈1000). Eleven life concerns are considered, including Income, Housing, Job, Health, Leisure, Neighborhood, Transportation, and Relations with other people. It is found that structures in all of these countries have a basic similarity and that the European countries tend to be more similar to one another than they are to USA. These results suggest that comparative research on subjective well-being is feasible within this group of nations.     

On the trail of the gold standard for subjective well-being

The absence of a ‘gold standard’ for subjective well-being has severely hampered the interpretation of data from empirical studies. This paper demonstrates a remarkable consistency among the results of 16 studies that have investigated ‘life satisfaction’ among large samples drawn from the general population. It is concluded that a population standard for ‘life satisfaction’ can be expressed as 75.0±2.5 percent of the measurement scale maximum score.     

Response artifacts in the measurement of subjective well-being

The degree to which response artifacts introduce error into self-report measures has long been a matter of concern in the psychological literature. For example, it has been suggested that self-report measures of subjective well-being (SWB) contain large amounts of variance due to the response style of social desirability (Carstensen and Cone, 1983). In the present study, four potential response artifacts (social desirability, current mood, moral beliefs about happiness, and happiness image management) and their effects on self reports of SWB were studied. Using nonself-report measures of happiness, in addition to self-report measures of SWB, various modes for the prediction of SWB were constructed. A measure of social desirability was found to be a significant predictor of nonself-report as well as self-reported measures of happiness, indicating that social desirability is a substantive personality characteristic which enhances well-being, rather than being a response artifact and source of error variance. Current mood was found to sometimes contribute as a predictor of self-report measures of SWB, suggesting the need for control of or assessment of its effects. Moral beliefs in happiness and image management did not significantly correlate with measures of happiness. Implications of the results for the measurement of well-being and for future research are discussed.     

Correlates of subjective well-being in Northern Wisconsin

This paper presents the results of an attempt to relate socioeconomic status, family status, social participation and personal disruptions of statuses and roles to an index of life satisfaction in rural sectors of Northern Wisconsin. While income, education and occupational status and level of living explain very little of life satisfaction, social participation variables explain somewhat more and disruptions of marital ties, job, physical well-being and residence explain most. Analyses by age and sex show that contacts with friends, relatives and church attendance are more important for the young, employment for the middle-aged and village residence more important for the older persons. The analysis supports the notion that life satisfaction results from the discrepancy between the aspirations and expectations of the individual and his ability to satisfy them within his environment. Education is negatively associated with subjective well-being when other variables are controlled. The influence of social involvement upon life satisfaction suggests the need for a modification of the aspiration-attainment model to include the integrative-expressive as well as the adaptive-instrumental processes of the individual.     

Top-down versus bottom-up theories of subjective well-being

This paper addresses issues of causal direction in research on subjective well-being (SWB). Previous researchers have generally assumed that such variables as domain satisfactions, social support, life events, and levels of expectation and aspiration are causes of SWB. Critics have pointed out that they could just as well be consequences (Costa and McCrae, 1980; Veenhoven, 1988). In some contexts this has been referred to as the top-down versus bottom-up controversy (Diener, 1984). The main purpose is to propose a general statistical model which holds promise of resolving this controversy. The model can be used when three or more waves of panel data are available. It is used here to assess causal direction between six domain satisfactions (marriage, work, leisure, standard of living, friendship and health) and SWB. Data are drawn from four waves of an Australian Quality of Life panel survey (1981–1987) with an initial sample size of 942.We particularly thank Ronald C. Kessler of the University of Michigan for his advice on statistical issues. We are also very grateful for comments from Frank M. Andrews of the University.of Michigan and Mariah Evans and Jonathan Kelley of Australian National University. Constructive comments from an anonymous SIR reader also led to significant revisions.     

Welfare reform and the subjective well-being of single mothers

Although a large body of research examines the impact of welfare reform, there remains considerable uncertainty as to whether single mothers’ well-being improved in the wake of these policy changes. Using unique data from the DDB Worldwide Communications Life Style^TM survey, this paper exploits a large battery of survey questions on self-reported life satisfaction and physical and mental health to study the impact of welfare reform on the subjective well-being of single mothers. The identification strategy relies on a difference-in-differences framework to estimate intent-to-treat effects for the welfare waiver and TANF periods. Results indicate that the bundle of TANF reforms had mostly positive effects on single mothers’ subjective well-being. These women experienced an increase in life satisfaction, greater optimism about the future, and more financial satisfaction. Furthermore, these improvements did not come at a cost of reducing mental and physical health. Welfare waivers, in contrast, had largely neutral effects on well-being. I provide indirect evidence that the increase in single mothers’ employment after welfare reform can plausibly explain the gains in subjective well-being.     

The relationship between mood and subjective well-being

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Assessing subjective well-being: Progress and opportunities

Subjective well-being (SWB) comprises people's longer-term levels of pleasant affect, lack of unpleasant affect, and life satisfaction. It displays moderately high levels of cross-situational consistency and temporal stability. Self-report measures of SWB show adequate validity, reliability, factor invariance, and sensitivity to change. Despite the success of the measures to date, more sophisticated approaches to defining and measuring SWB are now possible. Affect includes facial, physiological, motivational, behavioral, and cognitive components. Self-reports assess primarily the cognitive component of affect, and thus are unlikely to yield a complete picture of respondents' emotional lives. For example, denial may influence self-reports of SWB more than other components. Additionally, emotions are responses which vary on a number of dimensions such as intensity, suggesting that mean levels of affect as captured by existing measures do not give a complete account of SWB. Advances in cognitive psychology indicate that differences in memory retrieval, mood as information, and scaling processes can influence self-reports of SWB. Finally, theories of communication alert us to the types of information that are likely to be given in self-reports of SWB. These advances from psychology suggest that a multimethod approach to assessing SWB will create a more comprehensive depiction of the phenomenon. Not only will a multifaceted test battery yield more credible data, but inconsistencies between various measurement methods and between the various components of well-being will both help us better understand SWB indictors and group differences in well-being. Knowledge of cognition, personality, and emotion will also aid in the development of sophisticated theoretical definitions of subjective well-being. For example, life satisfaction is theorized to be a judgment that respondents construct based on currently salient information. Finally, it is concluded that measuring negative reactions such as depression or anxiety give an incomplete picture of people's well-being, and that it is imperative to measure life satisfaction and positive emotions as well.     

Stability and change in levels and structure of subjective well-being: USA 1972 and 1988

It has long been recognized that more needs to be known about the dynamic behavior of measures of subjective well-being. As the Social Indicators Movement matures, it becomes possible to explore issues of stability and change in measures of perceived life quality. To contribute to this research need, this paper reports results of administering similar measures of subjective well-being to several representative samples of the adult American population assessed 16 years apart — in 1972 and in 1988. Results show that in the United States, which has experienced reasonably continuous economic prosperity and no major social disruptions during these 16 years, thestructure of the subjective well-being measures (i.e. how they relate to one another and how concern-level measures predict global-level measures) has remained remarkably constant. This is in accord with expectation and enhances confidence in the validity and usefulness of the measures. Changes were found in thelevels of some of the measures: For the total population, feelings about life-as-a-whole, oneself, and one's own health became notably more positive; evaluations of own income and the national government also gained; but assessments of one's own family life, social relationships, community, and job remained fairly stable. Some of these gross changes were general throughout the population, but others occurred only for certain age, racial, or socioeconomic groups. Younger cohorts and people with higher educations and incomes showed more gains in subjective well-being than other groups.     

The stability and sensitivity of subjective well-being measures

A longitudinal investigation of the stability and sensitivity of several subjective social indicators is presented. Over a seven year period, data collected from 93 Canadians indicated moderate stability for measures of enjoyment, satisfaction, and life quality. When respondents were divided into “change” and “no change” groups on the basis of their self-reported health status, the self-anchoring ladder of present life quality was found to be sensitive to change. Implications of this methodological inquiry are examined.     

The correlation coefficient and models of subjective well-being

The issue has been raised previously that the use of the correlation or squared correlation as an estimate of determination depends on the type of model that is considered (Ozer, 1985). We identify three models of subjective well-being and show that the respective estimates of determination require different interpretations of the correlation statistic. The differences are illustrated using data from the Newfoundland Longitudinal Study of Aging. (NLSA).     

Some comments on ‘the structure of subjective well-being in nine western societies’ by andrews and inglehart

This paper makes a number of critical comments on a recent article by Andrews and Inglehart (1979), where the similarity of subjective well-being data from nine different countries was investigated. It is first shown that different MDS representations can be constructed for the data which differ considerably among each other and with respect to the similarity hypothesis. The goodness of the MDS solutions is discussed by using finer indices than overall Stress. Then, the measures of configurational similarity are evaluated statistically. Finally, it is shown that other, equally valid measures lead to completely different conclusions. It is argued that this poses an insurmountable problem. A facet theoretical approach which looks for prototypical structures rather than a single similarity index avoids this dilemma.     

Measuring subjective well-being: Unfolding the Bradburn Affect Balance Scale

Factor analysis of the items in the Bradburn Affect Balance Scale has repeatedly shown that the positive and negative affect items are unrelated. Despite this, negative affect scores are routinely subtracted from positive affect scores to derive Affect Balance Scale Scores that apparently provide a valid measure of a sense of well-being. In this paper we offer a resolution to this paradox — and so justify the use of Affect Balance Scale Scores — by showing that the positive and negative affect items each form a single cumulative scale, and that the two cumulative scales taken together form one unidimensional unfolding scale. This explanation is based on a hypothesis by Coombs and Kao (1960) — later proved mathematically by Ross and Cliff (1964) — that when data that are unfoldable in r dimensions are factor-analyzed, r+1 significant factors will be found. In an empirical test, Bradburn Affect Balance Scale data collected from ten countries in the 1981 and 1990 European Values Study surveys were analyzed. The results clearly support the hypothesis that the data form a single unidimensional unfolding scale, although two of the ten Affect Balance Scale items are not homogenous with the rest.     

Affective and cognitive components of global subjective well-being measures

A study was conducted to replicate some of the findings of Andrews and McKennell (1980), who examined affective, cognitive, and other components of global subjective well-being measures among respondents from the United States and Britain. Using data collected from 1068 Canadians, linear structural relations (LISREL) estimates of affective, cognitive, and error components of three global well-being measures provided general support for Andrews and McKennell's findings. Implications of the results, such as impact on the design of future studies and measures of subjective well-being, are discussed.     

Social desirability in measures of subjective well-being: Age comparisons

The present investigation evaluated the relationship between measures of psychological well-being and social desirability in three age groups: 21–40, 41–60, and 61–82 year-old samples. Data on 330 people, consisting of community and clinical groups, yielded high correlations between three measures of well-being (the MUNSH, the LSI-Z, and the PGC) and the Edwards Social Desirability Scale for all age groups, but only moderate ones between well-being scales and the Marlow-Crown Social Desirability Scale. Partial correlations between well-being measures and an external criterion of happiness, controlling for social desirability, failed to improve on the 0-order criterion/well-being relationship. Controlling for social desirability, therefore, does not enhance the construct validity of well-being scales in adult populations at any age. These results, combined with those on the factor structure of scale totals and on the discriminant validity of the well-being measures, suggest that the high 0-order correlations between measures of well-being and the Edwards scale are more readily attributed to content similarity between the Edwards scale and measures of well-being than to a social desirability response bias in well-being measures.     

Stability and change in subjective well-being over short time periods

Recent research has reported high stability for subjective well-being over periods as long as 9 years, concluding that well-being is essentially unaffected by environmental change. Other research has suggested well-being is responsive to change in life circumstances, and appropriate for use as an adaptational outcome variable. The present research examined the stability of well-being over short periods (3–6 months) using a range of well-being measures. Two different samples, mothers with young children and elderly persons, provided assessments of well-being and every day stressors (hassles) on three occasions, three months apart, as well as the personality measure, sense of coherence. Results demonstrated high consistency in well-being, but also found it to be influenced by environmental events and personality. With prior well-being controlled, current well-being was predicted by current hassles but not by past hassles. Coherence explained limited variance in current well-being with pror well-being controlled. Of the three factors, prior well-being, current hassles, and coherence, prior well-being was the strongest predictor of present well-being. These findings were consistent across the range of well-being measures, and replicated across the samples. Implications for the use of well-being as an adaptational outcome are discussed.     

The affective and cognitive context of self-reported measures of subjective well-being

Researchers attempting to understand the experience of subjective well-being have relied heavily on self-report measurement. Recent research focused on this method has demonstrated that a number of factors, such as the current mood of the respondent and the cognitive and social context surrounding the response, can significantly influence response to items inquiring about global subjective well-being or satisfaction with life. In the present study, several measurement strategies (e.g., single-item measures, multiple-item scales, and memory search tasks) were compared with regard to their susceptibility to such influences. Although some evidence for effects due to item-placement or transient mood were found, all of the global measures of subjective well-being and life satisfaction has significant convergence with peer-reports, and the single-item measures showed good temporal reliability across a one-month interval. The data provide evidence for a significant degree of stability in subjective well-being and life satisfaction.     

Marital status and subjective well-being: A changing relationship?

It is well established in the literature that married people have a higher level of subjective well-being than the never married, widowed, or divorced/separated. However, previous research has yielded conflicting results on changes in the relationship between marital status and well-being. American happiness data in particular provide evidence of a declining relationship, whereas other studies suggest the opposite trend. The present study analyzes time trends in the relationship between marital status and two outcome measures, suicide rates and self-reported distress. The hypothesis that the relationship between marital status and these well-being indicators has declined during the last 10–20 years is clearly rejected. There is even some evidence that the relative position of never married men has become more unfavorable during this period. However, the causal interpretation of these trends is problematic.     

A structural model of subjective well-being: A comparison of ethnicity

Using secondary data analysis, we proposed and tested a structural model of subjective well-being using LISREL V. Separate analyses were performed on samples of Asians (N=142), Blacks (N=338), Hispanics (N=188), and Whites (N=293). Exogenous predictor variables were age, serious personal loss, occupational status, and employment status. Endogenous predictors were self-perceived health, physical activity, and strength of social ties. Results indicated that within group models were somewhat different from each other. We concluded that analyses done separately be ethnicity yielded more accurate representations of structural models of subjective well-being, and provide evidence that ethnic groups are reference groups in which determinants of subjective well-being operate differentially.     

Structural influences on the relationship between objective and subjective indicators of economic well-being

The study investigated the relationship between objective and subjective indicators of economic well-being within different age, race, and sex groups over time. Stratification theory and an accommodation hypothesis were used to predict differential subjective responses to objective conditions within subgroups. Findings supported the hypothesis that the relationship would be weakest among the oldest age group compared to other age groups. Support was found for the hypothesis that predicted smaller coefficients among subgroups characterized as older, female, and nonwhite. Relationships were found to remain stable within all subgroups over time.