Quality of Community Life Among Rural Residents: An Integrated Model

The purpose of this research was to explore the relationships among housing satisfaction, community attachment and community satisfaction and the complex mechanisms involved in predicting community satisfaction among residents in rural communities. The role of housing satisfaction and community attachment in predicting community satisfaction was of particular interest. A structural equation model of community satisfaction was tested with mail survey data drawn from a randomly selected rural sample of 974 households. The results of this study confirmed the influences and mediating role of community attachment and housing satisfaction in predicting community satisfaction. “Spillover” effects from “lower levels of life concerns” (e.g., satisfaction with local services, assessment of current housing conditions) in perceived community satisfaction were found that support previous research (Sirgy and Cornwell in Social Indicators Research 59:79–114, 2002).     

Supervisor–Subordinate <Emphasis Type="Italic">Guanxi</Emphasis> and Job Satisfaction Among Migrant Workers in China

In urban China, improving rural–urban migrant workers’ subjective wellbeing has become an important goal for workplaces and local governments. Drawing from the social capital theory and using original survey data, we examine the relationship between migrant workers’ guanxi (‘personal relations’ in the Chinese context) with their supervisors and their job satisfaction. Our results show that supervisor–subordinate guanxi is positively related to migrant workers’ job satisfaction. This relationship is mediated by network resources and personal power, which serve as their social resources in workplaces. Our study contributes to the positive psychology literature by understanding the role of guanxi in shaping Chinese migrant workers’ job satisfaction. Implications and future research directions are discussed.     

Determinants of Rural Physicians' Life and Job Satisfaction

Objective: To identify and quantify factors that contribute to rural physicians' satisfaction with their jobs and life as a whole.Design: Cross-sectional, mailed survey. Study population: Family physicians practicing in rural communities eligible for British Columbia's Northern and Isolation Allowance. Main measures: Demographics, Domain satisfaction, Maslach Burnout Inventory, Beck Depression Inventory, and Life Satisfaction.Results: Stepwise multiple regressions reveal the greatest predicators of rural physician overall life satisfaction are satisfaction with jobs, personal relationships, health, finances, and absence of depression. These predictors account for 70% of the variation in rural physician overall life satisfaction. The greatest predictors of rural physician satisfaction with jobs and satisfaction with current place of residence/practice, on-call shifts, personal accomplishments, and absence of emotional exhaustion. The predictors account for 44% of the variation in rural physician job satisfaction.     

Changing Communities,Community Satisfaction,and Quality of Life: A View of Multiple Perceived Indicators

The relationship between a community’s services and conditions, satisfaction, and overall quality of life were examined in this study. As these relationships respond to specific contextual and cultural settings, qualitative methods were used to account for their complexity and depth. Key informant interviews were conducted in two rural communities experiencing changes in their living conditions as they shifted to a tourism-driven economy. The study allowed a better understanding of how residents contextualized the abovementioned relationships. Findings suggest the need to account for pre-existing social arrangements, and current community interactional and organizational conditions to better understand resident’s perceived living conditions, community satisfaction and quality of life.     

Determinants of quality of rural life in Nigeria: The women's view

This study investigated rural women's perception of quality of life. The study attempted to determine (a) the extent to which rural women in Nigeria actually understand the term “quality of life’, (b) the components of a good quality of rural life in Nigeria and (c) to compare the present quality of life with that enjoyed by the last generation. Based on a sample survey of 308 rural women in eleven villages in Oyo State; the study found that the ability to have plenty of children, good health, wealth and good personality were highly perceived as measures of essential components of quality of life in rural areas. Overall, the women indicated that their present living conditions in rural areas were better than the conditions in which the last generation lived.     

Measures of self-reported well-being: their affective,cognitive, and other components

This investigation begins from the hypothesis that social indicators of perceived well-being — e.g., people's assessment of their own life quality — will, like other attudes, reflect two basic types of influences: affect and cognition. In addition, the indicators were expected to include two other components: unique variance (mainly random measurement error) and correlated measurement error. These ideas are investigated using a structural modeling approach applied to 23 assessments of life-as-a-whole from a national survey of Americans (N=1072) and/or a survey of urban residents in England (N=932). In both sets of data, models that included affective and cognitive factors fit significantly better than more restricted models. Furthermore, as expected, measures of (a) ‘happiness’, ‘fun’, and ‘enjoyment’ tended to be relatively more loaded with affect than were measures of (b) ‘satisfaction’, ‘success’, and ‘meeting needs’; and (c) measures designed to tap both affect and cognition tended to fall between the first two groups. In addition, the results suggest that measures employing relatively many scale points and direct assessments yield more valid indicators of people's evaluations of life-as-a-whole than do measures based on three-point scales or on explicit comparisons with other times or groups. These results contribute to basic knowledge about the nature of life quality assessments, help to explain some previously puzzling relationships with demographic factors such as age and education, and may be useful to designers of future studies of perceived well-being.     

Exploring Community Cohesion in Rural Canada Post-Extreme Weather: Planning Ahead for Unknown Stresses

As social capital evolves, we need to better address how we assess it in terms of community connection and involvement. This research presents a longitudinal study of Goderich, Ontario’s post-tornado community connection and involvement in relation to the Capacities and Vulnerabilities Analysis (CVA) model’s social, physical, and motivational factors. We first address literature around rural communities, extreme stresses related to capacity and vulnerability, the window of opportunity, and current uses for the CVA model before continuing with a brief synopsis of the study community and our research methods of surveys and interviews. Our results highlight three key findings: (a) there was a reduction in perceptions of connection and satisfaction with rebuild from 2012 to 2016; (b) in 2016, employed individuals experience a stronger sense of connection to community; and (c) five years after the tornado, the more satisfaction with involvement the higher the sense of community connection. Concluding our discussion of these findings, we propose a modification to extend the CVA model’s usefulness to a wider range of situations. We argue a pre-emptive, motivationally focused CVA model can be a useful tool for rural communities in multi-level income locations to address their community’s capacities and vulnerabilities prior to an extreme stress and build their connection and involvement levels.     

Rurality and well-being during the middle years of life

Popular stereotypes and theorizing by social scientists suggest that rural people are more satisfied with their communities and happier with their life situations than are their nonrural counterparts. This enhanced well-being is believed to result at least partly from the presence of kinship and friendship ties in the local community and the adherence to traditional religious beliefs. Data from a panel study of nearly 1200 middle aged persons from Pennsylvania surveyed in 1971 and 1984 provided indices of community satisfaction and happiness. When income was controlled, country residents expressed slightly higher levels of community satisfaction than did town or urban dwellers in both time periods. Happiness was not related to residence location. Income was a relatively more important predictor of community satisfaction and happiness among urban than among country residents, while number of friends was relatively more important for rural residents. Number of kin living nearby and adherence to traditional religious beliefs were not related to well-being regardless of residence location.     

利还是弊:“啃老”对老年生活满意度的影响

本文利用中国健康与养老追踪调查数据(CHARLS)2011年数据,实证分析子女"啃老"对老年人生活满意度的影响。在考虑了数据聚类特征的情况下,发现老年人向子女提供经济支持有利于老年人生活满意度的提高,而照看孙子女则降低了老年人的生活满意度。而且,上述影响在不同老年人群体间缺乏一致性,也就是存在性别、城乡、年龄、不同经济状况间的差异。此外,老年人的健康状况、年龄、受教育程度、个人经济状况及所在社区情况都会对老年人生活满意度产生影响。     

Life satisfaction: A study based on the organization of personal projects

A methodology about personal project was used to understand perceived life satisfaction. Variables derived from the Personal Project Matrix were shown to explain variability in reported life satisfaction in two separate studies (university and professional samples). The results indicated that personal projects of students had been organized in systems and these systems' properties had meaningful effects on life satisfaction. A cross-validation analysis revealed that professionals' projects did not show the same systemic feature which students' projects had. But some variables such as projects performed in general places, stress, and amount of reported obstacles discriminated life satisfaction scores meaningfully.     

Complex measures of job satisfaction/dissatisfaction among professionals

The present study deals with concepts of work satisfaction/dissatisfaction and occupational commitment among professionals. It examines elements of job satisfaction and individual social background among four professional groups: Doctors, Engineers, Lawyers and Teachers, as well as their differences in level of job satisfaction/dissatisfaction. A two-stage principal components method was applied to data from the longitudinal study ‘Professions in Australia’ to obtain global measures of job satisfaction/dissatisfaction. Although there are some differences between professional groups in terms of work satisfaction/dissatisfaction, stemming, among other things, from the different prestige ascribed to each profession, to a large extent, they face similar ‘problems’ and derive similar ‘satisfaction’ from their professional work.     

Aversion to Local Wellbeing Inequality is Moderated by Social Engagement and Sense of Community

Our subjective wellbeing is a mix of our personal and community wellbeing. One indication of their close relationship is the strong negative correlation between our own subjective wellbeing and the degree of subjective wellbeing inequality within our community. This negative relationship reflects our innate and socialized inequality aversion and holds regardless of whether the group is large as in the case of countries or small in the case of local neighbourhoods. While the country case has been well documented in the subjective wellbeing literature, the relationship between the local community distribution of subjective wellbeing and individual subjective wellbeing has received little attention. In this paper we demonstrate the sensitivity of individual life satisfaction to the distribution of life satisfaction within electoral wards in urban New Zealand and explore several possible behavioural drivers. We find that having social support and feeling a sense of community both reduce the negative effects of local subjective wellbeing inequality, while being less socially engaged exaggerates them. Our results highlight the potential that programmes aimed at reducing wellbeing inequalities within local communities might play in raising individual as well as average wellbeing.

     

Subjective Residential Environment and its Implications for Quality of Life Among University Students in Hong Kong

This paper reports the results of a convenient sample survey of 500 Hong Kong university students conducted in May 2003. The main aim of the survey was to investigate the respondents’ perception of the residential environment and its implications for the quality of life (QOL). Results indicated that the respondents were generally satisfied with the residential environment, scoring a mean satisfaction rating of 3.32, on a 5-point Likert scale. The type, size and age of a respondent’s home, years of occupancy and attending university were found to be significantly related to the overall satisfaction. Transport (4.37), environmental quality (4.30), and public utilities (4.25) were reported to be the most important infrastructures for the QOL, but environmental quality (3.21), education (3.11) and greening (2.98) were considered to be the least satisfactory ones. The desirable distribution of facilities and services was defined by their functions and the new urban designs were appreciated by the respondents. Although available space was less than the ideal and public transport was a serious concern, the respondents had adapted well to the high-density environment and enjoyed the urban life in Hong Kong. It is hoped that the results and findings of this study can provide a reference for the formulation of future development strategy in Hong Kong.     

Wellbeing Among Indonesian Labour Migrants to Malaysia: Implications of the 2011 Memorandum of Understanding

A spate of media attention has focused on the harsh conditions endured by Indonesian labour migrants in Malaysia. In June 2009, human rights abuses led to a ban by Indonesia on recruitment of Indonesians for domestic service in Malaysia. This ban was overturned on May 30th 2011, with the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between the two nations on migrant employment conditions. Against this backdrop, this paper reports on the findings of a survey administering the Personal Wellbeing Index (PWI) among a sample of Indonesian labour migrants. The aims of the study were: (a) to determine the degree to which Indonesian labour migrants to Malaysia are satisfied with their lives; (b) to contribute the first psychometric data for the PWI for this migrant group; (c) to compare results to existing studies for other labour migrants in Asia; (d) to examine whether the PWI responses fall within the narrow range predicted by the ‘Theory of Subjective Wellbeing Homeostasis’; and (e) to determine the contributions of sets of perceived macroeconomic conditions, perceived institutional factors and perceived social conditions to the prediction of wellbeing over and above the contribution of demographics. Results indicated a high level of personal wellbeing and the PWI demonstrated good psychometric properties. In particular, the sample reported very high satisfaction with religiosity. The PWI full score narrowly exceeded the normative range for non-Western countries and was within the narrow band predicted by the ‘Theory of Subjective Wellbeing Homeostasis’. Sets of perceived macroeconomic conditions, institutional factors and social conditions added incrementally to the prediction of wellbeing over and above demographics, suggesting that current attempts inherent in the MoU to stem abuse and improve conditions for Indonesian labour migrants might have benefits to subjective wellbeing in this migration context in the future.     

Sense of Community Belonging and Health in Canada: A Regional Analysis

This article investigates the association between sense of community belonging and health among settlements of different size and across the urban to rural continuum in Canada. Using data from the recent 2007/08 Canadian Community Health Survey (CCHS), the objective is to identify the major health, social and geographic determinants of sense of community belonging and to consider policy options aimed at improving sense of belonging among certain segments of the population. The research found a significant and consistent association between sense of belonging and health, particularly mental health, even when controlling for geography and socio-economic status. At the same time, sense of community belonging improved progressively across the urban to rural continuum with remarkably high levels of belonging evident in the outer most regions of Canada. Despite the health deficit that exists in rural and small-town Canada, the paper postulates that these communities are able to overcome health challenges to create conditions conducive to a positive sense of belonging. Overall, sense of belonging was also found to be highest among seniors, people residing in single-detached homes and among couples with children and was lowest among youth, residents of high-rise apartments and among single-parents. Finally, in the context of addressing deficiencies in sense of belonging, the paper examines several recent policy developments aimed at improving mental health services in Canada.     

Midwives’ job satisfaction and intention to leave their current position in developing regions of Ethiopia

BackgroundThe aim of this research was to analyze midwives’ job satisfaction and intention to leave in developing regions of Ethiopia.MethodsA facility-based cross-sectional study was conducted amongst 107 midwives in four developing regions of Ethiopia. All midwives who were working in 26 health facilities participated in the study. A structured self-administered questionnaire, and in depth key informant interview guides, were used to collect data. Job satisfaction was measured by nine dimensions and intention to leave their current position was measured using three questions.ResultsMore than two-thirds (67%) of the midwives were female, with a mean age of 26.1 (sd ± 4.2) years old. Less than half (45%) of the midwives were satisfied with their job, less than half (42%) were satisfied with ‘work environment’ and less than half (45%) were satisfied with ‘relationship with management’ and ‘job requirements’. Relatively better satisfaction rates were reported regarding ‘professional status’, of which more than half (56%) of midwives were satisfied, followed by more than half (54%) of midwives being satisfied with ‘staff interaction’. Almost two-fifths (39%) of midwives intended to leave their current position.ConclusionJob dissatisfaction and intention to leave rates amongst midwives in developing regions in Ethiopia are a source of concern. The majority of midwives were most dissatisfied with their working environment and issues related to payment. Their intention to leave their current position was inversely influenced by job satisfaction. The introduction of both financial and nonfinancial mechanisms could improve midwives’ job satisfaction, and improve retention rates within the profession.     

Cultural bias in ratings of perceived life quality

The results of comparative surveys have demonstrated great differences of perceived life quality. Yet there is doubt whether these differences mean that people are really more satisfied in one country than in another. It is generally believed that the responses are distorted by factors such as language, familiarity with concepts like satisfaction, and social desirability pressures. Though often alleged, the truth of these charges has not yet been demonstrated empirically. Ostroot & Snijder (1985) now claim to have demonstrated that about 40% of the difference in satisfaction between the French and Americans is due to ‘cultural bias’: in particular to a rosier outlook of the latter. Yet their arguments labor under two defects: Firstly, their use of the word ‘bias’ is misleading. They do not demonstrate any discrepancy between avowed satisfaction and ‘true’ satisfaction. Speaking of a ‘cultural effect’ would be more appropriate. Secondly, Ostroot & Snyder do not demonstrate that the greater satisfaction of Americans is due to a rosier outlook on their part. The data do not allow the conclusion that Americans hold a rosier view than the French, nor that such a view is responsible for their greater satisfaction.     

Worry and Bother: Factors in Rural Women’s Health Decision Making

This exploratory study examined older rural women’s health decision making. Thirty-three rural women were recruited to participate in semistructured qualitative interviews. Major themes emerged that focused on rural women’s comments regarding their concerns about not worrying or bothering their children with personal health matters. Themes were discussed in the context of an ethic of care. Results suggest that it is important for mental health professionals, family physicians, social workers, and other practitioners to be aware of the sense of worry and concern for others that older rural women bring to bear in decision making about personal health issues.     

Unsettling moods in rural midwifery practice

Background

Rural midwifery and maternity care is vulnerable due to geographical isolation, staffing recruitment and retention. Highlighting the concerns within rural midwifery is important for safe sustainable service delivery.

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.