Gender, Age and Subjective Well-Being: Towards Personalized Persuasive Health Interventions

Abdullahi Abubakar Kawu,Aisha Muhammad Abdullahi,Rita Orji

doi:10.3390/info10100301

Abdullahi Abubakar Kawu, Aisha Muhammad Abdullahi + Show 1 more

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https://doi.org/10.3390/info10100301

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Abstract

(1) Background: Subjective well-being (SWB) is an individual’s judgment about their overall well-being. Research has shown that high subjective well-being contributes to overall health. SWB consists of both Affective and Cognitive dimensions. Existing studies on SWB are limited in two major ways: first, they focused mainly on the Affective dimension. Second, most existing studies are focused on individuals from the Western and Asian nations; (2) Methods: To resolve these weaknesses and contribute to research on personalizing persuasive health interventions to promote SWB, we conducted a large-scale study of 732 participants from Nigeria to investigate what factors affect their SWB using both the Affective and Cognitive dimensions and how distinct SWB components relates to different gender and age group. We employed the Structural Equation Model (SEM) and Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) to develop models showing how gender and age relate to the distinct components of SWB; (3) Results: Our study reveals significant differences between gender and age groups. Males are more associated with social well-being and satisfaction with life components while females are more associated with emotional well-being. As regards age, younger adults (under 24) are more associated with social well-being and happiness while older adults (over 65) are more associated with psychological well-being, emotional well-being, and satisfaction with life. (4) Conclusions: The results could inform designers of the appropriate SWB components to target when personalizing persuasive health interventions to promote overall well-being for people belonging to various gender and age groups. We offer design guidelines for tailoring persuasive intervention to increase SWB based on an individual’s age and gender group. Finally, we map SWB components to possible persuasive technology design strategies that can be employed to implement them in persuasive interventions design.

Highlights

Health and well-being are not just the absence of disease or illness, it is a combination of a person’s social, mental, emotional and physical health [1]
Model (SEM) and Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) to develop models showing how gender and age relate to the distinct components of Subjective well-being (SWB); (3) Results: Our study reveals significant differences between gender and age groups
This study presents the results from investigating whether different gender groups and age groups respond differently to the distinct components of SWB

Summary

Introduction

Health and well-being are not just the absence of disease or illness, it is a combination of a person’s social, mental, emotional and physical health [1]. Subjective well-being (SWB) is an individual’s judgment about their overall well-being and includes both Affective reactions (emotional, social and psychological well-being) and Cognitive judgments (satisfaction with life and happiness) [5,6]. Research has shown that there are relationships between physical health and the distinct components of SWB. Diener et al [22] reported SWB to consist of two distinct dimensions: (1) an Affective dimension (Hedonic) and (2) a Cognitive dimension (Eudemonic). The Affective dimension is a hedonic evaluation guided by emotions and feelings [22]. It reflects the amount of pleasant feelings and unpleasant feelings that people experience in their lives [22]

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