Subjective Well-Being Measuring Happiness, Suffering, and Other Dimensions of Experience (2013) / Chapter Skim
Currently Skimming:
Summary
Summary
Pages 1-14
The Chapter Skim interface presents what we've algorithmically identified as the most significant single chunk of text within every page in the chapter.
Select key terms on the right to highlight them within pages of the chapter.
From page 1... ...
During the past decade, interest in the topic among policy makers, national statistical offices, academic researchers, the media, and the public has increased markedly because of its potential for shedding light on the economic, social, and health conditions of populations and for informing policy decisions across these domains. An impetus to this movement came from the 2009 report of the Commission on the Measurement of Economic Performance and Social Progress (Stiglitz et al., 2009)
|
From page 2... ...
SWB data have already proven valuable to researchers, who have produced insights about the emotional states and experiences of people belonging to different groups, engaged in different activities, at different points in the life course, and living day to day in different family and community structures. Research has also revealed relationships between people's selfreported, subjectively assessed states and their behavior and decisions.
|
From page 3... ...
In practice, a number of ExWB measurement approaches and objectives coexist, ranging from the moment-to-moment assessments of emotional states to questionnaires and interviews that require reflection by respondents about somewhat longer time periods, such as a whole day. ExWB measures can, in a sense, be viewed as a subspectrum of the overall SWB continuum that at one end involves a point-in-time reference period and is purely hedonic ("How do you feel at this moment?
|
From page 4... ...
Or a person who is chronically suffering or lacking hope may experience temporary reprieve in an enjoyable moment. CONCLUSION 2.1: Although life evaluation, positive experience, and negative experience are not completely separable -- they correlate to some extent -- there is strong evidence that multiple dimensions of SWB coexist.
|
From page 5... ...
When to include factors beyond the hedonic core depends on the research or policy question. For example, in studies of housing conditions or medical treatment effectiveness, sensations such as physical pain, numbness, heat, or cold, which enhance or degrade momentary experience, have an obvious relevance.
|
From page 6... ...
CONCLUSION 3.1: Momentary assessment methods are often re garded as the gold standard for capturing experiential states. However, these methods have not typically been practical for general population surveys because they involve highly intensive methods that are difficult to scale up to the level of nationally representative surveys and involve considerable respondent burden, which can lead to low response rates.
|
From page 7... ...
For example, if the question is how people feel during job search activities, while undergoing medical procedures, or engaged in child care, more detailed information than can be typically ascertained from a global daily assessment is needed. Activity-based or time-use methods -- such as the Day Reconstruction Method (DRM)
|
From page 8... ...
Survey mode refers to how questions are posed to respondents -- for example, by personal interview, telephone, or Internet instrument. Results from another split sample of the ONS survey found significantly higher lifesatisfaction, happiness, and worthwhile scores (and lower anxiety scores)
|
From page 9... ...
Rather, their value may come from the discovery of actionable relationships for specific policies -- in such diverse areas as health, city planning and neighborhood amenities, divorce and child care practices and laws, commuting infrastructure, recreation and exercise, social connectedness, and corruption -- that may otherwise escape attention. CONCLUSION 5.1: ExWB data are most relevant and valuable for informing specific, targeted policy questions, as opposed to general monitoring purposes.
|
From page 10... ...
The second prong of a comprehensive measurement program involves inclusion of SWB questions in specialized, focused data collections. Examples include health interview surveys, time-use surveys, and neighborhood environment surveys.
|
From page 11... ...
Because research continues to reveal details about the links between healthy emotional states and healthy physical states, health surveys provide an increasingly secure foothold for ExWB measurement. An appealing feature of smaller-scale or special-purpose surveys is that they can often be supported by funding agencies in such a way that content matches well with their organizational missions.
|
From page 12... ...
For government data collection to stay relevant and feasible, statistical agencies will need to apportion some of their resources to understanding and adapting to emerging survey methods, new "big data" sources, and alternative computational science methods for measuring people's behavior, attitudes, and states of well-being. Assessment of Current Data Collection Very few if any national statistical offices have the resources needed to pursue data collection on all the fronts identified above as parts of the ideal strategy.
|
From page 13... ...
at this point, the SWB module is practical, inexpensive, and worth continuing as a component of ATUS. Not only does the ATUS SWB module support research, it also provides additional information to help refine SWB measures that may one day be added to the body of official statistics.
|
Key Terms
This material may be derived from roughly machine-read images, and so is provided only to facilitate research.
More
information on Chapter Skim is available.