Social Trust,Social Partner Time and Television Time

Social trust is an important phenomenon, but the influence of important time-based measures upon trust has not been examined. Such measures include social contact and anti-social activity, such as television watching, which allows for the co-presence of other people. This paper reports on associations between trust and weighted means of co-present ‘social’ time (defined as time spent in various ‘social’ activities) and co-present time spent watching television, using the Australian Time Use Survey, 2006. It finds that trust is associated with social time spent in the co-presence of ‘strangers’ predominately from outside the household, and that TV watching in the co-presence of ‘familiars’—friends and family—is negatively associated with trust.     

Reporting Systems for Sustainability: What Are They Measuring?

The dominance of the neoliberal discourse in the sustainability debate has tended to privilege the economy over environment and social dimensions with implications for what is measured by sustainability monitoring systems. Moreover, systems to measure sustainability, including those influenced by neoliberal discourse, lack robust definitions and fail to address the interrelationship between social, economic and environmental contexts. If sustainability indicators are to help understand the interrelated forces driving change, by providing indications of sustainability, then the indicators should be derived from an epistemologically consistent conceptual framework which encapsulates clearly defined phenomena. The paper discusses whether sustainability indicators in the Australian context are derived from an epistemologically consistent framework. It is argued that the validity of current sustainability reporting systems is contestable.     

Effect of Changes in Living Conditions on Well-Being: A Prospective Top–Down Bottom–Up Model

Using the German Socio-Economic Panel, we examined life-satisfaction and housing satisfaction before and after moving (N = 3,658 participants from 2,162 households) with univariate and bivariate two-intercept two-slope latent growth models. The main findings were (a) a strong and persistent increase in average levels of housing satisfaction, (b) no increase in average life-satisfaction, (c) low stability in individuals’ level of housing satisfaction, and (d) high stability in individuals’ level of life-satisfaction. The results are discussed in the context of top–down and bottom–up models as well as adaptation theories of well-being. We conclude that moving or living in a better home is unrelated to life-satisfaction judgments for two reasons. First, housing makes a small contribution to life-satisfaction judgments. Second, positive effects of better housing are undermined by the greater costs of living in a better home. The results provide no support for the prediction of adaptation theory that shifting aspirations undermine the benefits of living in a better home.     

The Incompatibility of Materialism and the Desire for Children: Psychological Insights into the Fertility Discrepancy Among Modern Countries

We examined factors related to attitudes toward marriage and the importance of having children in both the US and Singapore. Path analysis indicated that life dissatisfaction leads to materialism, and both of these factors lead to favorable attitudes toward marriage, which leads to greater desire for children. Further analysis indicated this model was effective in explaining the difference in desire for children between Singaporeans and Americans, whereby Singaporeans have lower life satisfaction, higher materialism, and lower attitudes toward marriage and children. Materialistic standards of success were also related to the emphasis women placed on potential marriage partners’ earning capacity. As Singaporean women had higher materialistic standards, they also placed higher emphasis on potential mates’ earning capacity. Results suggest a consideration of psychological variables such as life satisfaction, materialism, and mate preferences may lead to a better understanding of larger-scale socioeconomic issues, including low fertility rates among developed East Asian countries.     

Cumulative Disadvantage and Connections Between Welfare Problems

In this paper, we perform a latent class factor analysis of a panel that involves two waves of data from an annual survey of living conditions in Sweden that were gathered in the years 1994–1995 and 2002–2003. We follow the same 3,149 individuals over both waves, describing them by sex, age group, family type, nationality background, education level and socio-economic class. Further, since the welfare disadvantages included in the analysis are chronic unemployment, economic problems, health problems, experiences of threat or violence, crowded housing, lack of a close friend and sleeping problems, we also have data on exactly which welfare problems each individual in the data set suffers from. In the empirical analysis, latent class factor analysis provides us not only with information on which individual characteristics that are important in the accumulation of welfare problems, but also gives us information on which disadvantages in fact are accumulated. First, we find that welfare problems do cluster. Second, the welfare problems that most often appear at a factor level with several disadvantages are experiences of threat or violence and sleeping problems. Finally, being an immigrant and being single are individual characteristics that turn up most often in factor levels with problem accumulation, whereas there is no distinctive difference between the sexes. However, women seem to be more prone to suffer from experiences of threat or violence and sleeping problems, while men are more likely to suffer from lack of a close friend.     

Measuring Mutual Help Willingness and Criteria among Hong Kong People: Confirmatory Factor Analyses

Mutual help has been often found to be beneficial for people’s well-being in clinical settings. Research in the general population, however, is relatively limited, partly due to the lack of applicable measurement tools. The present study attempted to develop two scales to measure mutual help willingness and criteria and test their psychometric properties among a community sample of Hong Kong people (n = 951). Confirmatory factor analyses suggested that the hypothetical models fitted the data very well. Results also indicated that though the willingness to seek help and to give help was significantly correlated, Hong Kong people were generally more willing to give help than to seek help. Age had a negative effect on help-seeking willingness, which can not be explained by education level. A set of criteria were applied similarly when people decided on help-giving and help-seeking. Agreement with the criteria was negatively correlated with age but the associations became negligible when education level was controlled. Research and practical implications of the findings are discussed.     

Who Benefits from Religion?

Many studies have documented the benefits of religious involvement. Indeed, highly religious people tend to be healthier, live longer, and have higher levels of subjective well-being. While religious involvement offers clear benefits to many, in this paper we explore whether it may also be detrimental to some. Specifically, we examine in detail the relation between religious involvement and subjective well-being. We first replicate prior findings showing a positive relation between religiosity and subjective well-being. However, our results also suggest that this relation may be more complex than previously thought. While fervent believers benefit from their involvement, those with weaker beliefs are actually less happy than those who do not ascribe to any religion—atheists and agnostics. These results may help explain why—in spite of the well-documented benefits of religion—an increasing number of people are abandoning their faith. As commitment wanes, religious involvement may become detrimental to well-being, and individuals may be better off seeking new affiliations.     

The Relationship Between Hope,Eustress, Self-Efficacy,and Life Satisfaction Among Undergraduates

The construct of eustress was studied alongside hope and self-efficacy, to explore how these constructs are related to life satisfaction among undergraduates. Questionnaires were administered to undergraduates to test the hypotheses that (1) as eustress levels increase, so will life satisfaction levels; (2) when eustress, hope, and self-efficacy are examined together, they will predict life satisfaction better than eustress alone; (3) eustress, hope, and self-efficacy will all be positively correlated with life satisfaction; and (4) self-efficacy will be the most positively correlated with life satisfaction. The results revealed a significant positive correlation between eustress and life satisfaction. A Hierarchical Linear Regression analysis revealed significant results supporting hypotheses 2 and 3, but not hypothesis 4. Results indicated that hope is the best predictor of life satisfaction. The work reported provides a reliable tool for measuring eustress, examines eustress in a new way at the academic level, and provides helpful information about student wellness to college administrators.     

Follow-up surveys for census estimates of maternal mortality: experiences from Bolivia and Mozambique

Maternal mortality measurement through special census questions will be a common practice in the 2010 census round. To check this information or make it cause-specific, some countries have experimented with follow-up surveys containing verbal autopsies or triangulation with administrative data. However, follow-up studies can be costly and not without complications. In order to assess the benefits, two such experiences are discussed in detail (Bolivia, 2002; and Mozambique 2007–2008) and two others mentioned more briefly (Islamic Republic of Iran, 1996; and Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, 2008). In the former, several problems were apparent. In Mozambique, the follow-up survey used a cluster sample of 4.5% of deaths, from all causes. This design was adequate for the more common causes, but not for maternal mortality. Another problem was the large proportion of invalid cases (35.1%, plus 16% not verifiable) and the likelihood that there was a similar proportion of omitted deaths. The Bolivian census generated many invalid cases and missing ages, due in part to the flawed design of the questionnaire. This overburdened the follow-up, so that only 15% of the census deaths of women of reproductive age unrelated to pregnancy could be investigated. Once the false positives were eliminated, the results seem consistent with Growth Balance analyses, but the many classification errors compromise confidence in the results. Despite this mixed record of outcomes, it is believed that carrying out a limited number of similar studies in the current census round may be valuable, if appropriate lessons are learned from these experiences.