Subjective Well-Being Measuring Happiness, Suffering, and Other Dimensions of Experience (2013) / Chapter Skim
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6 Data Collection Strategies
6 Data Collection Strategies
Pages 103-124
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From page 103... ...
is extremely promising for contributing to a fuller understanding of people's behavior and life conditions, and such information should be collected by national statistics offices to the extent that it is practically and financially feasible. However, the panel also recognizes that measurement approaches are not yet fully mature, which generates concerns about their unqualified adoption at this time.
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From page 104... ...
(2009) that, where feasible, inclusion of SWB questions on the largest population surveys will produce useful information.
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From page 105... ...
Large-scale population surveys -- such as the four-question module in the UK Integrated Household Survey or the Gallup World Poll -- make up one component of a comprehensive measurement program. Data from these surveys, typically drawn from global-yesterday measures of ExWB and 3 At this stage of development, the task of improving measurement methods still lies mainly with academic researchers (many with funding from grant-making government institutions)
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From page 106... ...
An ever-present consideration for a national statistical office is whether to begin data collection with incomplete knowledge of appropriate structure and its likely value -- presumably starting modestly with a small module of questions -- or waiting until more is known, when possibly a more expensive, more multidimensional approach can be supported. The second prong of a comprehensive measurement program is smaller or more specialized data collections.
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From page 107... ...
The policy relevance of monitoring SWB changes over time is clear where, for example, it is important to know the full impact on people of new legislation, such as the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, or the full impact on outcomes of experiments such as the Oregon Health Care Study.6 Changes in a population's aggregate-level SWB associated with specific events, even very dramatic ones such as the financial collapse or the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, can be difficult to detect using broad surveys, even with very large samples (Deaton, 2012)
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From page 108... ...
As described in Chapter 3, momentary sampling methods have been central to SWB research but largely out of practical reach for adoption by national statistical offices. However, rapid changes in technology and in the way the public exchanges information have brought the world to a point where momentary assessment techniques may now be on the horizon for national statistics.
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From page 109... ...
ONS is moving forward on a broad survey of SWB measures, and it may later begin adding granular time-use and targeted survey components. The plan would be quite different for the United States, where ATUS has been temporarily in place as an "experimental module" but where a SWB module for the largest population surveys is lacking.
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From page 110... ...
The above statements raise the difficult question of what the criteria are for establishing the level of confidence needed for an official series. As described in Box 6-1, national and international statistical offices take some care to define what official statistics are and to specify the roles that they serve.
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From page 111... ...
. relevance, and credibility among data users certainly figure into the decision to establish an official series, but it is essentially an iterative process whereby data are first deemed worth collecting, then used to produce pilot or test statistics, and sometimes rising to be published as an official series (as in the case of the consumer price index or unemployment rate)
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From page 112... ...
As researchers take advantage of this emerging data source, much may be learned about the SWB of the UK population and about next steps in developing effective and useful SWB modules. Further, ONS has stated the view that "National Statistics" status does not preclude further refinement.11 6.2 How to leverage and coordinate existing data sources Although researchers have benefited enormously from data collection by the Gallup World and Daily Polls, the World Values Survey, and others, there is clear value (complementary at the very least)
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From page 113... ...
6.2.1 SWB in Health and Other Special-Purpose Surveys Several surveys provide a platform for SWB measurement in health domains. One of these, the HRS, is a nationally representative longitudinal survey of more than 26,000 Americans over the age of 50.
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From page 114... ...
for embedding SWB questions. Similarly, the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System -- a repeated cross-sectional survey, which includes a county-level identifier and questions about SWB -- has been used to study life-style choices and SWB (focusing mainly on evaluative well-being)
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From page 115... ...
, which is overseen by the Department of Housing and Urban Development and conducted by the Census Bureau.13 Inspired by the research of Robert Sampson on Chicago neighborhoods, the survey will include a new module in 2013 called the "Neighborhood Social Capital Module," which was created as a "rotating topical module that collects data on shared expectations for social control, social cohesion, and trust within neighborhoods, and neighborhood organizational involvement."14 The AHS survey is conducted with a large, geographically diverse sample, which will enable detailed neighborhood social-capital assessments to be produced for 25 metropolitan areas. Adding SWB questions to the AHS would allow researchers to explore the relationship of SWB measures with community characteristics (the magnitude of income disparities, provision of social services, etc.)
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From page 116... ...
; the Health and Retirement Study (health, aging, and work transition links) ; the American Housing Survey's Neighborhood Social Capital module (community amenities and social connectedness links)
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From page 117... ...
. If attaching SWB questions to an existing instrument can be done at low marginal cost, it seems a good value (see Appendix B for the panel's interim report on the ATUS SWB module)
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From page 118... ...
It is not obvious that three activities is the optimal number of activities to include on the ATUS SWB module. It may be useful to ask about ExWB associated with more activities in order to increase the reliability of daily estimates.
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From page 119... ...
18 Thisidea was raised by Mathias Basner, of the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, who noted that self-assessments of habitual sleep time overestimate physiological sleep time and that estimates of habitual sleep time based on ATUS overestimate self- ssessments a of habitual sleep times found in other population studies. Therefore, he suggested, it would be very elucidating to compare self-assessments of sleep time for the two questions suggested above against estimates based on ATUS responses for the day before the interview day (public comments for the ATUS SWB module: see http://www.reginfo.gov/public/do/ DownloadDocument?
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From page 120... ...
Wordmining exercises have been used to show patterns in emotional states -- for example, a Facebook happiness index showed the standard weekend and holiday effects and expected changes associated with major events, such as disasters. Additionally, analyses of data generated by social media and other Internet activities will produce insights relevant to public policy beyond those focusing primarily on aspects of negative experience such as distress or pain.
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From page 121... ...
The British Millenium Cohort Study is considering use of geospatial cellphone responses as a post-survey supplement. There are still major unresolved data quality and representativeness issues in this world of new data and big data.
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From page 122... ...
More broadly, the emergence of big data (which consists mainly of data generated for purposes quite different from those driving government surveys) that can be captured from a variety of (largely though not exclusively)
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From page 123... ...
This will entail monitoring survey data collected by private and other public organizations in order to assess needs, determine the most effective and efficient use of scarce government-survey space, and develop survey measures that are both valid and reliable and that best complement and supplement existing regularly conducted surveys. They also must stay abreast of developments in the survey research field, including threats to traditional survey modes and 21 This webpage describing their work on "word use, personality and well-being" can be found at http://www.cis.upenn.edu/~ungar/CVs/WWBP.html [October 2013]
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From page 124... ...
emerging methods of research designed to explore the use of both digital and digitized big data and other computational science methods for measuring people's behavior, attitudes, and states of well-being.
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