Exploring Multidimensional Well-Being in Switzerland: Comparing Three Synthesizing Approaches

Well-being is increasingly conceptualized and measured from a multidimensional perspective in order to provide policy makers and the general public with the necessary tools for monitoring social change. Synthetic measures of multidimensional concepts such as well-being are, therefore, needed. This paper provides a systematic comparison of three methodological approaches applicable in a top-down perspective to construct a synthetic multidimensional measure of well-being using the same theoretical framework and the same data. The three methodologies used are the confirmatory factor analysis, the Alkire and Foster counting approach and the posetic approach. The first two methodologies belong to the family of composite indicators, the most common way to synthetize multidimensional information. The third was developed in order to deal with the construction of composite indicators’ two major issues, namely weighting and aggregating. The main contribution of this paper is methodological; it aims at discussing the advantages and drawbacks of the three methodologies, and at identifying their similarities and specificities.     

Stuck with ‘electronic brochures’? How boundary management strategies shape politicians’ social media use

Social media provide new opportunities for politicians, such as personalized communication directed at specific communities of interest. Yet despite potential benefits, empirical analyses show that politicians tend to shy away from an active engagement of online audiences. This study explores the effect of politicians’ online boundary management on their use of social media. Ties maintained through social media profiles can be embedded in diverse social contexts (‘context collapse’). Professional communicators, especially, are faced with the challenge of managing boundaries between professional and private online self-presentations. Based on a survey of 106 German members of parliament, we distinguish four types of boundary management strategies. We analyze the effects of these strategies on politicians’ social media use practices – and find that considering boundary management strategies allows for a better understanding of politicians’ online engagement (or lack thereof).     

Relational Family Therapy as an Aid Toward Resolving the Trauma of Sexual Abuse in Childhood in the Process of Separation in the Couple Relationship

Relational family therapy (RFT) is a psycho‐organic therapeutic approach that combines intrapsychic dynamics with interpersonal mechanisms and a systemic perspective. This integrative model is based on the assumption that the repetitive patterns of relationships in early childhood repeat in adulthood. It often happens that a sexually abused individual will later unconsciously be attracted to someone with whom they will relive the abusive atmosphere and dynamics from childhood. The purpose of this contribution is to present the RFT approach for dealing with sexual abuse. We will present a case study with individual segments from therapy with a woman, who previously had been sexually abused and was separated from her partner.     

Norms,moods, and free lunch: Longitudinal evidence on payments from a Pay-What-You-Want restaurant

We study the distribution and evolution of payments in a Pay-What-You-Want restaurant. Despite missing price tags and despite the option to pay nothing at all, we observe that the vast majority of guests makes strictly positive payments. Over the two years covered by our data, average payments decline slightly, converging at a positive level. At the same time, the number of daily guests increases steadily, resulting in a considerable increase in total revenues. We discuss one possible interpretation of the long-term trend in payments in terms of social norms. We further show that short-term fluctuations in average payments are partly explained by exogenous weather changes. We provide evidence that – in line with work in psychology – weather-induced changes in mood affect payments.     

Food stamps and the time cost of food preparation

Using a structural model of time allocation between household production and market work, I estimate the shadow wage of household production. I combine data from the American Time Use Survey and the Current Population Survey??s Food Security Supplement to estimate the time cost as well as the total cost of food preparation at home. Using information on whether a household received food stamp benefits, I compare actual food stamp recipients?? time cost to those who do not receive food stamp benefits. Previous literature that also uses American Time Use Survey data suggests that ??typical?? food stamp recipients incur a higher time cost of preparing food at home. I cannot confirm this finding using actual data on food stamp recipients and non-recipients. In fact, the lower shadow wage of household production of food stamp recipients more than offsets the larger amount of time spent preparing food at home, generating lower time cost of food preparation for them.     

Agency,Values, and Well-Being: A Human Development Model

This paper argues that feelings of agency are linked to human well-being through a sequence of adaptive mechanisms that promote human development, once existential conditions become permissive. In the first part, we elaborate on the evolutionary logic of this model and outline why an evolutionary perspective is helpful to understand changes in values that give feelings of agency greater weight in shaping human well-being. In the second part, we test the key links in this model with data from the World Values Surveys using ecological regressions and multi-level models, covering some 80 societies worldwide. Empirically, we demonstrate evidence for the following sequence: (1) in response to widening opportunities of life, people place stronger emphasis on emancipative values, (2) in response to a stronger emphasis on emancipative values, feelings of agency gain greater weight in shaping people’s life satisfaction, (3) in response to a greater impact of agency feelings on life satisfaction, the level of life satisfaction itself rises. Further analyses show that this model is culturally universal because taking into account the strength of a society’s western tradition does not render insignificant these adaptive linkages. Precisely because of its universality, this is indeed a ‘human’ development model in a most general sense.     

Approaches and challenges in evaluating measures taken against right-wing extremism

Right-wing extremism has reemerged on the political agenda in Switzerland over the last decade, much as in other European states. Most of the time, right-wing extremism remains latent. However, as soon as a constituency is confronted with manifest right-wing incidents (right-wing extremist group meetings, racist assaults or violence against individuals and groups), the issue reappears in the political sphere. The countermeasures available to governments frequently remain unclear: empirically based evidence on the effectiveness of specific measures is often simply lacking. In this article we argue that this inadequacy is mostly due to the specific characteristics of the particular conditions of conflict and violence that are associated with the phenomenon of ‘right-wing extremism’. These conditions include an often only insufficiently clarified understanding of the phenomenon of ‘right-wing extremism’ as well as a highly sensitive political, social and legal context for countermeasures. Furthermore, the effectiveness of countermeasures is typically strongly dependent on the actors involved as well as their actions and interactions. Implementation is therefore often unique and, as a consequence, difficult to replicate. We will address these specific challenges for evaluation under such conditions in seven case studies. Each case study includes an evaluation of a measure that has been taken against phenomena of right-wing extremism in Switzerland on the federal, state or community level. The case studies show that certain challenges for evaluation can be met by adopting an adequate evaluation design. Other aspects require further investigation and may not be adequately addressed through the evaluation of countermeasures.     

A Poisson-Based Framework for Setting Poverty Thresholds Using Indicator Lists

Poverty is one of the most important concepts in the social sciences, yet commonly-used thresholds for the operationalization of poverty have little or no conceptual basis. This is especially true of the “relative deprivation” poverty concept, where the arbitrary threshold of missing k ≥ 3 items from a list of socially defined necessities is the accepted operationalization. This paper presents a conceptual framework for meaningfully setting k based on the properties of the Poisson distribution. Data from the 2011 Swiss Household Panel are used to illustrate this approach for three poverty concepts: conventional relative deprivation based on non-affordability of items (“afford-deprivation”), simplified relative deprivation based on non-possession of items (“possess-deprivation”), and a novel approach based on the status syndrome concept (“high life burden”). Proof-of-concept analyses suggest thresholds of k ≥ 2 for conventional afford-deprivation, k ≥ 5 for possess-deprivation, and k ≥ 6 for high life burden. In addition to providing a rationale for k, the Poisson-based approach allows for the systematic variation of k in different empirical contexts. It also supports the estimation of “adjusted” poverty rates that account for the chance probability that non-poverty households are accidentally miscategorized as being in poverty.