Indicators Of Subjective Well-being Research Articles

Anger, anxiety, depression, and negative affect: Convergent or divergent?

Anger, anxiety, depression, and negative affect have been examined frequently as indicators of employees' subjective well-being. Some researchers have adopted a convergence perspective, assuming these four variables as interchangeable. Others use a divergence perspective, treating each of the four as a distinct emotion. The goal of this study was to directly compare anger, anxiety, depression, and negative affect and examine whether the nomological network of these four emotional variables converges or diverges. We offer theoretical arguments for both the convergence and divergence hypotheses and use meta-analytical data based on 491 studies (N = 235,085) to examine which hypothesis receives stronger support. The results show that (a) anger, anxiety, depression, and negative affect were strongly correlated with one another, (b) the corrected correlations of these variables with workplace stressors and outcomes were similar (although some differences also existed), and (c) these variables, in the presence of one another, did not explain unique variance in some study correlates. These results appear to more strongly support the convergence hypothesis, and call for more work on how negative emotions should be integrated into vocational behavior research.

Modelo sociocognitivo de la satisfacción vital en personas con enfermedad crónica

La satisfacción vital es un importante indicador del bienestar subjetivo en enfermos crónicos. En este trabajo se recurre al modelo sociocognitivo de salud para analizar las variables psicosociales que influyen en la satisfacción vital. Se plantea un modelo explicativo en el que la satisfacción vital está determinada por el estrés experimentado, el sentimiento de eficacia para afrontar las dificultades derivadas de la enfermedad y la percepción de autonomía personal. Se desarrolló un diseño transversal con una muestra de 64 personas que padecían enfermedades crónicas. Se contactó con los enfermos a través de asociaciones de salud y se administró un cuestionario. Se constata que el estrés y la autoeficacia de afrontamiento son determinantes directos y significativos de la satisfacción. En este sentido, los participantes que se perciben con menos estrés y con más capacidad de afrontamiento experimentan más satisfacción en la vida. Los que tienen mayor capacidad de afrontamiento son los que sienten menos estrés. La autonomía funcional, menor en las mujeres que en los hombres, condiciona indirectamente la satisfacción, a través del estrés y la autoeficacia de afrontamiento, de forma que cuanto menor es la autonomía percibida mayor es el estrés percibido y menor la eficacia de afrontamiento. El modelo planteado explica el 35% de la satisfacción vital. Los resultados reflejan la necesidad de enseñar estrategias cognitivas para afrontar la enfermedad y de capacitar al enfermo para tener mayor autonomía funcional y menor dependencia del entorno social.

Life satisfaction and positive and negative feelings of workers: a systematic review protocol

BackgroundIn this article, conceptualization of well-being is a starting point. According to Diener, subjective well-being refers to all kinds of evaluation, both positive and negative, people make about their own lives. It includes cognitive assessments, such as satisfaction with life and satisfaction with work, as well as affective reactions to life events, such as sadness and contentment. Low levels of health and well-being in workers lead to many consequences. Sick leave, low productivity, and absenteeism are some examples. In this systematic review, the main objective is to assess workers’ subjective well-being.MethodsThe studies should include workers, whether they are paid or volunteers. Also, they must assess workers’ subjective well-being. Observational peer-reviewed studies will be included. Qualitative studies will be excluded. The primary outcomes to be considered are the subjective well-being indicators described. Only studies that used six (6) instruments, developed by Diener, will be included. The instruments are Satisfaction With Life Scale (SWLS), Scale of Positive and Negative Experience (SPANE), Positive Thinking Scale (PTS), Flourishing Scale (FS), Comprehensive Inventory of Thriving (CIT), and Brief Inventory of Thriving (BIT). The studies will come from Scientific Electronic Library Online (SciELO), Biblioteca Virtual em Saúde (BVS), Portal da Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES), MEDLINE, Embase, Web of Science, and Global Index Medicus databases. The studies must be written in Portuguese, English, or Spanish.DiscussionAs far as we know, this is the first systematic review related specially to workers’ subjective well-being. We hope that this study contributes to the “well-being at work” discussion and also to the development of effective interventions, used outside and inside organizations, that could improve well-being scores and increase correlate variables scores such as general health, social relations, and quality of life.Systematic review registrationPROSPERO CRD42016039520

Measurement Instrument and Indicators of Subjective Well-Being: A Review Paper

Subjective well-being is focusing on happiness and life satisfaction of the people. This review is carried out to examine the contributing factors of people's happiness and life satisfaction and also to determine the measurement instrument used in conducting a survey. A total of 60 articles obtained from academic search engines and online databases which are Google Scholar, ScienceDirect and Scopus have been chosen to be reviewed within a period from September 2017 until January 2018. Only 33 articles indexed in Scopus and ISI are eligible for final review.

Screening Using the SDQ Total Difficulties Scale: An Analog Test of Three Cutoff Values

This brief report presents an analog test of the relative classification validity of three cutoff values (CVs; 16, 18, and 20) derived from responses to the self-report version of the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire: Total Difficulties Scale. Results from Bayesian t-tests, using several school-specific subjective well-being indicators as dependent variables, yielded evidence suggesting all CV models effectively differentiated between students with lower and higher levels of risk. Evidence also indicated that the lowest CV (16) was more effective than the higher CVs (18, 20) at identifying students with greater levels of risk, and that the higher CVs functioned comparably well. Implications for future research and practice are noted.

The Specificity of the Life Trajectory and Indicators of Subjective Well-Being of Adults with Hearing Impairment

The Specificity of the Life Trajectory and Indicators of Subjective Well-Being of Adults with Hearing Impairment

Reliability Generalization of the Meaning in Life Questionnaire Subscales

Meaning in life is a psychological construct linked to several subjective well-being indicators. One commonly used meaning in life measure is the Meaning in Life Questionnaire (MLQ), a 10-item self-report measure that assesses perceived presence of and search for meaning in life. Despite its extensive use, the variability of the questionnaire’s reliability across samples has not been examined. This study synthesized reliability evidence for the Meaning in Life Questionnaire from 232 articles. Average reliabilities for both subscales were greater than .85. Results indicated that, though, overall, the MLQ is highly reliable across samples, the questionnaire’s reliability varies as a function of several sample characteristics. Furthermore, we found some evidence of reporting bias. Implications for the conceptualization of meaning in life across diverse samples and potential underreporting of low reliability estimates are discussed.

Delphi exploration of subjective well-being indicators for strategic urban planning towards sustainable development in Malaysia

This study seeks expert consensus to determine indicators that could be used to assess subjective well-being for strategic urban planning in the context of sustainable development. For this purpose, a Delphi study including a panel of 45 academic experts was carried out. The study consisted of two rounds. At each round, experts were asked to rate key elements by assessing indicator as very low importance, low importance, moderate importance, high importance and very high importance. A 75% agreement was used as cutoff. The results at second round reveal that panelists agreed on 37 key indicators being essential to assess subjective well-being for sustainable urban development. Using these results as a framework to develop guidelines at local, state, and national levels would allow better assessing and comparing transition programs towards sustainability.

The Great Recession and subjective well-being: How did the life satisfaction of people living in the United Kingdom change following the financial crisis?

The financial crisis of 2007/08 precipitated a severe global economic downturn, typically referred to as the Great Recession. However, in the United Kingdom this period has been marked by limited change in national indicators of subjective well-being. We assessed the life satisfaction change in response to the Great Recession in a sample of British adults (N = 8,661). We first show that on average the life satisfaction change across the sample was limited. However, average effects may mask substantial amounts of heterogeneity in the data. We therefore explore beyond this average effect to determine whether there were disproportionate changes (losses and gains) in life satisfaction in key sub-groups of the population. We found that individuals experiencing unemployment, who lost income, were sick or disabled, experienced the greatest well-being reductions. Contrastingly the life satisfaction of many individuals did not greatly change following the Great Recession and for some it may have even improved. Our work highlights vulnerable groups that may need additional help during recession periods and also cautions against the over reliance on average measures of well-being.

Bayesian Data Analysis of Citizens’ Needs through Subjective Well-being Indicators

Bayesian Data Analysis of Citizens’ Needs through Subjective Well-being Indicators

Volunteering and Subjective Well-Being Among Individuals With Disabilities: A Multivariate Model

The main goal of the study was to evaluate the contribution of volunteering to explaining two indicators of subjective well-being—self-esteem and sense of meaning in life (MIL)—among people with physical disabilities in Israel. The sample included 160 Israeli participants with physical disabilities, of whom 95 had volunteered and 65 had not. The findings revealed that volunteering was both directly and indirectly associated with factors that facilitate the sense of MIL but was not associated with factors that inhibit MIL. Furthermore, volunteering was found to mediate the relationship of economic and family support to self-esteem and to facilitators of MIL. The results point to a sequence of contingencies that facilitate indicators of subjective well-being: when people with disabilities have high levels of economic resources and family support, they are more likely to volunteer; in turn, volunteer activity increases self-esteem and promotes a sense of MIL.

The Impacts of Cash Transfers on Subjective Wellbeing and Poverty: The Case of Colombia

Cash transfer programs have been the main social policy in the fight against poverty and inequality in Latin-American countries. This paper analyzes the impacts of the program Mas Familias en Accion on the perception of poverty and subjective wellbeing in Colombia. The analyses are based on data from the Encuesta Nacional de Calidad de Vida between 2008 and 2016. Two empirical strategies were compared to account for the lack of randomness in groups of beneficiary and non-beneficiary families: (i) non-experimental designs (linear and nonlinear models with cross-sectional and pooled data); (ii) quasi-experimental designs (Propensity Score Matching and Inverse Probability Weighted Regression Adjustment). The results were robust to the different empirical strategies and emphasized that: (i) transfers increase the perception of food insecurity and subjective poverty; (ii) conditionalities involve positive impacts on different indicators of subjective wellbeing, especially health and education; (iii) general impacts on the perceptions of life are nonsignificant, as a result of divergent impacts on the dimensions of the subjective wellbeing of families.

What Makes Young Russians Happy and Satisfied With Their Lives?

Participants ( N = 10,672 with the mean age of 20.7 years) of the Russian Character and Personality Survey (RCPS), involving 40 universities or colleges from across the Russian Federation, rated their happiness and satisfaction with life; the ratings were combined into an index of subjective well-being (SWB). Using the National Character Survey (NCS), participants also rated their own personality characteristics as well as those of an ideal person and a typical Russian living in their own region. Only two personality (test) subscales—N3: Depression and E6: Positive Emotions—were correlated with SWB on the between-individual level of analysis. Although spiritual values associated with a negative attitude toward money are typically regarded as an essential part of the Russian national character, our results demonstrated that only satisfaction with one’s own financial situation was a reliable predictor of SWB. In those regions where people had, on average, a higher life expectancy, better education, and a higher level of wealth, individuals also tended to be happier and more satisfied with their lives.

The resilient brain: psychological resilience mediates the effect of amplitude of low-frequency fluctuations in orbitofrontal cortex on subjective well-being in young healthy adults.

Psychological resilience reflects the capacity to bounce back from stress, which plays an important role in health and well-being. However, less is known about the neural substrate for psychological resilience and the underlying mechanism for how psychological resilience enhances subjective well-being in the healthy brain. To investigate these issues, we employed fractional amplitude of low-frequency fluctuations (fALFF) measured with resting-state fMRI in 100 young healthy adults. The correlation analysis found that higher psychological resilience was related to lower fALFF in the left orbitofrontal cortex (OFC), which is involved in reward-related processing and emotion regulation. Furthermore, the mediation analysis indicated that psychological resilience acted as a full mediator of the association between the fALFF in left OFC and subjective well-being indicators (i.e. life satisfaction and hedonic balance). Importantly, these results remained significant after controlling for the effect of gray matter volume and regional homogeneity in the region. Overall, the present study provides the further evidence for functional neural substrates of psychological resilience and reveals a potential mechanism that psychological resilience mediates the effect of spontaneous brain activity on subjective well-being.

Activities within an Ecological, Relationship-Based Model of Children’s Subjective Well-Being

This paper describes the epistemological approach, methodological considerations and results of a qualitative study examining activity participation in the context of an ecological, relationship-based model of children’s subjective well-being. Qualitative data was gathered using the Multinational Qualitative Interview Protocol and the Paediatric Activity Card Sort (PACS), and coded using grounded theory methodology. Inductive analysis of interviews with 17 children, ages eight to 13 years, led to multiple indicators of subjective well-being, classified into six domains - social connectedness, physical health, mastery and agency, safety and security, meaningful access to resources, and meaningful use of time through activity. Children’s perspectives about their well-being led us to expand the theoretical model to include constructs from developmental and occupational sciences. We posit that children’s subjective well-being can be understood as the transformative interaction between the child, his or contexts of home and family, community, school, and peers, and engagement in meaningful activity.

Emotional Intelligence and Its Relationship with Levels of Social Anxiety and Stress in Adolescents.

The aim of this work is to extend the research on the relationships between emotional intelligence and various indicators of subjective well-being in adolescents, such as stress and social anxiety. The existence of differences in stress and social anxiety as a function of an emotional intelligence score is also analyzed. A total of 505 Spanish adolescents between the ages of 12 and 18 participated in the study. The results obtained support the existence of a positive relationship between trait emotional intelligence and subjective well-being. Likewise, the existence of a negative association between emotional intelligence and stress, and emotional intelligence and social anxiety, is confirmed. These results are consistent with other similar works based on adolescent samples.

Childhood obesity and its association with the feeling of unhappiness and low levels of self-esteem in children of public schools

overweight children are at increased risk for psychosocial disorders. the purpose of this research was to relate the condition of overweight and obesity to the levels of self-esteem and happiness in schoolchildren of public schools. a total of 364 schoolchildren (180 boys and 184 girls) were enrolled between eleven and 13 years old (12.44 ± 1.14 years old). Anthropometric measurements were performed and the levels of self-esteem and happiness were evaluated through the School Self-Esteem Test (APT). RESULS: school self-esteem was significantly higher in boys (p < 0.001); 55.49% (n = 204) of the students evaluated were overweight. Overweight and obese subjects had lower levels of self-esteem compared to normal weight children (p = 0.032). In addition, 43 students had very low self-esteem, and a relationship between very low and low self-esteem levels (n = 119) and the overweight and obesity was observed (p = 0.033). In relation to the question "Am I a happy person?", a greater proportion of students answered positively (n = 296). The negative response to the question was associated with weight excess (p = 0.042). overweight and obesity were related to low levels of self-esteem and happiness in schoolchildren. These results are alarming since self-esteem is one's appreciation of oneself and happiness is an index of subjective personal well-being and is a topic that concerns families and the entire education system.

Correction to: Does the Realisation of Children’s Rights Determine Good Life in 8-Year-Olds’ Perspectives? A Comparison of Eight European Countries

The UN Convention of the Rights of the Child forms a normative basis for the understanding and measurement of child well-being. Nevertheless, there is still the question of how far the rights are reflected in the everyday lives of children. This study is aimed at constructing a bottom-up approach to study reflections of rights in children’s perceptions of a good life. It tries to demonstrate the relationships between the indicators of subjective well-being in the rights framework (such as feeling safe, being heard and cared for and treated fairly) and the subjective perception of good life measured among eight-year old children. Three sources of well-being – family, school and friends are put in focus. The empirical basis of the paper comes from the second wave of the Children’s Worlds study. Its sub-sample of over 8000 eight-year old children from eight European countries is used. Sub-indices of rights reflections in four rights domains (protection, provision, participation and non-discrimination) and a general index of a rights reflection in children’s well-being assessments are constructed as an operational model for data analysis. The analysis revealed that provision (being cared for) and protection (feeling safe) are the leading determinants of a good life in children’s perspectives, while participation (being heard and listened to) and non-discrimination (being treated fairly) are the most diverse determinants of a good life across countries.

Adolescents Satisfaction with Life in Venezuela

The study of satisfaction with life in the country of adolescents in the city of Caracas - Venezuela, is measured using subjective social indicators, in order to have one concrete assessment of the different areas of their lives. Satisfaction can be seen from different theoretical lines, as an important psychological force that helps to facilitate the adaptation during the development or optimum performance, able to moderate the relationship between stressful life events and the outsourcing of the behavior. Through the connection with the sense of what is happening at that moment. The project is based on a sample of 796 students for 2012–2013 academic year, the mean of ages 15, 90 (SD = 0, 95). The sample distribution consisted of 46.94% women and 53.06% males. In the same way, 48.69% of the students assisted to public schools and the remaining 51.31% went to private schools. A correlational study with cross-cutting non-experimental design was used. Two instruments were used: the dimension well-being national of the PWI-A and ESCVP (Tonon 2009) the scale of satisfaction with the life in the country. The more prominent results have shown greater satisfaction for students of public schools in contrast with the students of private schools. Similarly, there were differences in specific indicators regarding gender, with greater satisfaction of the male group. The national well-being (index) with greater satisfaction indicator was the possibility of doing business. Conversely, the lowest satisfaction indicators were related to national security (public safety) and with the Government, and in relation more specifically with the latter, it is observed that the lowest satisfaction indicator was related to the decisions of the Government to attend the needs of the population. These two latest indicators also showed a positive correlation with the variable of age.

Exploring self-concept, wellbeing and distress in therapeutic songwriting participants following acquired brain injury: A case series analysis

ABSTRACTAcquired brain injury (ABI) presents a significant threat to sense of self and necessitates a complex process of psychosocial adjustment. Self-concept changes remain understudied in the early stages of inpatient rehabilitation. The aim of the current study was to examine changes in self-concept, distress, wellbeing and functional skills for five inpatients undertaking a music therapy intervention within a subacute rehabilitation centre in Victoria, Australia. Participants completed a six-week, 12-session therapeutic songwriting programme to produce past-, current- and future-self-focused songs. A range of self-concept, subjective wellbeing and distress measures were completed pre-, mid- and post-intervention. A descriptive case series approach was applied to determine trends in pre-post scores for five individual cases. Participants showing the greatest gains across self-concept and subjective wellbeing indices also showed the greatest functional gains on the Functional Independence Measure (FIM) from admission to discharge. The current study highlights the importance of examining early changes in self-concept, wellbeing and distress in subacute rehabilitation, and suggests that individualised songwriting programmes warrant further research attention in neurological populations.