A Qualitative Cross-Cultural Comparison of Well-Being Constructs: the Meaning of Happiness, Life Satisfaction, and Social Support for German and Chinese Students

Julia Brailovskaia,Saskia Scholten,Muyu Lin,Wenting Guo,Jürgen Margraf,Shan Lu,Xuan Li,Dan Cai,Meixia Zhu,Yue Fu,Shuqing Hu,Meihua Shao

doi:10.1007/s10902-021-00454-6

Abstract

A Qualitative Cross-Cultural Comparison of Well-Being Constructs: the Meaning of Happiness, Life Satisfaction, and Social Support for German and Chinese Students

Highlights

As early as 1948, the importance and distinctions between social and mental well-being have been clearly established by the constitution of the World Health Organization; “health is a state of complete physical, mental, and social well-being” (World Health Organization, 1948)
In Bieda et al (2017) and Lin et al (2019), the intercepts of Item 3 (I experience a lot of understanding and security from others.), Item 5 (If necessary, I can borrow something I might need from neighbors or friends.), Item 8 (I have friends and family who will just hug me.) and Item 11 (There are people who share joy and sorrow with me.) had to be released in order to establish measurement invariance of the F-SozU K-14
The factor loading of Item 2 (The conditions of my life are excellent.) and the intercepts of Item 1 (In most ways my life is close to my ideal.) and Item 3 (I am satisfied with my life.) could not be constrained when testing measurement invariance across countries (Bieda et al, 2017)

Summary

Introduction

As early as 1948, the importance and distinctions between social and mental well-being have been clearly established by the constitution of the World Health Organization; “health is a state of complete physical, mental, and social well-being” (World Health Organization, 1948). Studies on social well-being mostly focus on social support (e.g., quality or number of social contacts) and social adjustment (e.g., satisfaction with relationships or performance in social roles) This disentanglement of both dimensions of well-being (i.e., subjective well-being and social well-being) has been supported empirically across different cultures (Joshanloo et al, 2014, 2016; Joshanloo, 2019a, 2019b; Ryan & Deci, 2001; Teismann & Brailovskaia, 2019). The current study focused on the following representations of the two dimensions of well-being: happiness and satisfaction with life as a measure of subjective well-being, and perceived social support as a measure of social well-being

Objectives

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Conclusion