Subjective Well-Being Measuring Happiness, Suffering, and Other Dimensions of Experience (2013) / Chapter Skim
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Appendix B: The Subjective Well-Being Moduleof the American Time Use Survey:Assessment for Its Continuation
Appendix B: The Subjective Well-Being Moduleof the American Time Use Survey:Assessment for Its Continuation
Pages 153-182
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From page 153... ...
Appendix B The Subjective Well-Being Module of the American Time Use Survey: Assessment for Its Continuation NOTE: For brevity, several pages of front matter and the appendix of Biographical Sketches of Panel Members that appear in the published version of this interim report have been omitted in this version. The reference list for citations in this appendix is at the end of the appendix.
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APPENDIX B 155 The Subjective Well-Being Module of the American Time Use Survey: Assessment for Its Continuation Panel on Measuring Subjective Well-Being in a Policy-Relevant Framework Committee on National Statistics Division of Behavioral and Social Sciences and Education
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JOSEPH HOTZ, Department of Economics, Duke University DANIEL KAHNEMAN, Woodrow Wilson School, Princeton University ARIE KAPTEYN, The RAND Corporation, Santa Monica, CA AMANDA SACKER, Institute for Social and Economic Research, University of Essex, United Kingdom NORBERT SCHWARZ, Department of Psychology, University of Michigan JUSTIN WOLFERS, The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania CHRISTOPHER MACKIE, Study Director ANTHONY S MANN, Program Associate
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APPENDIX B 157 Contents SUMMARY 1 BACKGROUND AND OVERVIEW 1.1 Structure and Content of ATUS and the SWB Module 1.2 Objectives of the SWB Module 1.3 Uses of Data on Subjective Well-Being 2 ONGOING AND POTENTIAL RESEARCH APPLICATIONS 2.1 Time Use, Emotional Well-Being, and Unemployment 2.2 Assessing Validity of Short Versions of the Day Reconstruction Method 2.3 Episode-Based Pain Studies 2.4 End-of-Life Care 2.5 Transportation 3 ASSESSMENT 3.1 Value of the SWB Module Data to Date 3.2 Cost of Discontinuing the Module 3.3 Value of a Third Wave REFERENCES
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The charge for the study included an interim report to consider the usefulness of the ATUS SWB module and specifically the value of continuing it for at least one more wave. Among the key points raised in this report are the following: • Value The ATUS SWB module is the only federal government data source of its kind -- linking self-reported information on indi viduals' well-being to their activities and time use.
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. Be cause two new questions -- one on overall life satisfaction and one on whether respondents' reported emotional experiences yesterday were "typical" -- were introduced to the module only in 2012, at least one additional wave of the survey is needed to assess changes in responses to those questions over time.
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and the United Kingdom Economic and Social Research Council asked a panel of the National Research Council's Committee on National Statistics to review the current state of research knowledge and evaluate methods for measuring self-reported well-being and to offer guidance about adopting SWB measures in official population surveys (see Box 1-1 for the full charge to the panel)
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The panel will prepare a short interim report on the usefulness of the American Time Use Survey subjective well-being module, and a final report identifying potential indicators and offering recommendations for their measurement. A later, separate second phase will seek to develop a framework modeled on the National Income and Product Accounts to integrate time-based inputs and outputs, and SWB measures, into selected satellite, or experimental, subaccounts.
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measures of economic activity, yet it is likely that it affects well-being. The ATUS provides nationally representative estimates of how people spend their time.
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Respondents are asked questions about three activities selected with equal probability from those reported in the ATUS time diary (the wellbeing module questions are asked immediately after the core ATUS)
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This information creates opportunities to analyze interactions between health states and reported assessments of emotional states. This is important because daily experience is linked to health status and other outcomes via channels such as worry and stress on the one hand, and pleasure and enjoyment on the other.
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2) , asking the Cantril ladder question enables researchers "to build a link between time use and day reconstruction methods of measuring wellbeing on the one hand, and standard life evaluation questions on the other .
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and evaluative well-being (i.e., cognitive judgments of overall life satisfaction or dissatisfaction) extends the policy value of the SWB module data.
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Data from the module can also be used to measure whether the amount of physical pain that workers experience varies by occupation and disability status. The fact the SWB module can be linked to demographic characteristics of respondents -- labor force status, occupation, earnings, household composition, school enrollment status, and other characteristics captured on the core ATUS and CPS -- opens up a wide array of possible studies on the correlates of self-reported well-being.7 Collection of data on subjective well-being also supports the mission of the module's sponsor, NIA, to improve the health and well-being of older Americans.
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2.1 Time Use, Emotional Well Being, and Unemployment In an analysis of the differences in time use and emotional well-being between employed and unemployed people -- for specific activities identified using the ATUS sample -- Krueger and Mueller (2012) show that the unemployed get less enjoyment out of leisure and report higher levels of sadness during specific activities relative to employed (the sadness decreases
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2.2 Assessing Validity of Short Versions of the Day Reconstruction Method (DRM) Vicki Freedman, Richard Gonzalez, Lindsay Ryan, Norbert Schwarz, Jacqui Smith, and Robert Stawski, are comparing DRM -- which involves asking respondents to reconstruct and describe episodes of the previous day and the feelings they experienced during each -- with shorter survey approaches that retain a subset of DRM features.9 This work is comparing findings from the Health and Retirement Study (HRS)
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This approach is novel relative to the global assessment methodologies typically used in population studies. The authors used data from the Princeton Affect and Time Survey (PATS)
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The distinction between hedonic well-being and other dimensions of well-being addressed in the 2012 SWB module may be especially important for the end of life, when the balance between predominantly purposeful and pleasurable activities might change. In addition, the well-being of eldercare providers is of interest to policy makers because the elderly population is growing, along with a reliance on informal care providers to assist them.
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1) describe how transportation forecasting models may be used to help inform policy and investment decisions; they use the 2010 ATUS and SWB module data to develop a multivariate model designed to "capture the influence of activity-travel characteristics on subjective well-being while accounting for unobserved individual traits and attitudes that predispose people when it comes to their emotional feelings." They find that "activity duration, activity start time, and child accompaniment significantly impact feelings of well-being for different activities" (includ ng travel)
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Several characteristics of the SWB module data contribute to its value: • Its status as the only national data source on subjective well-being that is linked to activities and time use. • Its Day Reconstruction Method (DRM)
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In these cases, a range of evidence -- revealed preference, stated preference, and subjective wellbeing measures -- can usefully be drawn upon. And well-being measures that are tied to specific activities add a great deal of subtlety to these analysis; for example, while perhaps unemployed persons are able to engage more in activities they like to do (spend time with friends or relatives, rest, watch 12 The day reconstruction method is itself an approximation of more time-consuming experi ence sampling and ecological momentary assessment methods; however, the day reconstruction method captures information about episodes while the ecological momentary assessment method typically captures information about moments (Christodoulou, Schneider, and Stone, 2012)
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This design element prevents modules from impacting response to the core ATUS and CPS.15 Because the SWB questions are the last thing the respondent hears, the impact on the core ATUS is expected to be minimal. Similarly, the SWB module cannot, by design, bias the core diary responses.
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This is especially true for comparing self-reported well-being score across smaller population subgroups. Almost all of the research to date using ATUS -- which covers a wide range of topics, from household production, to work and leisure patterns, to childcare issues -- has pooled data across years to increase the robustness of the statistical estimates.16 The need to enlarge samples (pool data)
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Doubling or even tripling the number of episodes may be cost-effective, a lthough that benefit would have to be weighed against consider ations of participant burden and the potential impact on response rates. • Selecting the "right" positive and negative emotion adjectives for module questions.
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The merits of retaining some fraction of the sample for experimental work should be strongly considered, presumably not for 2013 but for subsequent years. One such experiment would be to determine sample sizes needed for subgroup analyses (e.g., day reconstruction method questions, which rely on some recall, are systematically answered differently by older and younger populations; in an aging society, it is important to be cognizant of these effects)
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and to move into new research areas surrounding SWB. Smaller-scale studies and data collections, such as the ATUS SWB module, are needed to help judge the value and feasibility of embarking on production of national-level SWB statistics, such as those under development in the United Kingdom.
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. Validation of a Brief Yesterday Measure of Hedonic Well-Being and Daily Activities: Comparison with the Day Reconstruction Method.
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. Report by the Commission on the Measurement of Economic Performance and Social Progress.
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