Reported Life Satisfaction Research Articles

Analyzing Subjective Well-Being Data with Misclassification

We use novel nonparametric techniques to test for the presence of nonclassical measurement error in reported life satisfaction (LS) and study the potential effects from ignoring it. Our dataset comes from Wave 3 of the UK Understanding Society that is surveyed from 35,000 British households. Our test finds evidence of measurement error in reported LS for the entire dataset as well as for 26 out of 32 socioeconomic subgroups in the sample. We estimate the joint distribution of reported and latent LS nonparametrically in order to understand the mis-reporting behavior. We show this distribution can then be used to estimate parametric models of latent LS. We find measurement error bias is not severe enough to distort the main drivers of LS. But there is an important difference that is policy relevant. We find women tend to over-report their latent LS relative to men. This may help explain the gender puzzle that questions why women are reportedly happier than men despite being worse off in objective outcomes such as income and employment.

Does Sports Make People Happier, or Do Happy People More Sports?

We contribute to the happiness literature by analyzing the causal relationship between sports and happiness. Using longitudinal data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (GSOEP), we find a positive correlation between sports participation and reported life satisfaction. This relationship is stronger at younger and older ages than in middle age, and for people in bad health compared to those in average health. We further provide evidence for both causal directions. It turns out that the causal impact of engaging in sports on happiness is about four times higher than the effect of happiness on engaging in sports.

Time well spent versus a life considered: changing subjective Well-Being in China

Abstract Using unique longitudinal survey data that employed the Day Reconstruction Method to measure experienced utility (EU) in rural China, this study reveals striking differences in the trends for life satisfaction and EU. We find that reported life satisfaction changed little over the period from 2006 to 2009. However, EU increased significantly during the same period. The improvement in EU is mainly due to more positive feelings about specific activities rather than changes in the time spent on different activities. These findings are consistent with the predictions of aspiration adaptation theory.

Could sleep paralysis be pleasant?

Sleep paralysis is an inability to move at sleep onset or upon awakening. It is often a distressing experience that can be associated with significant clinical consequences. Few studies have focussed on pleasant sleep paralysis episodes. The present study aimed to determine the relative prevalence of pleasant episodes of sleep paralysis as well as variables that may make them more likely to occur. Participants (N=172) with recurrent episodes of sleep paralysis completed a battery of questionnaires investigating sleep paralysis episodes, trauma symptoms, life satisfaction, and Big Five personality traits. Pleasant sleep paralysis was found to be a fairly common experience (i.e. 23%). Episodes were emotionally complex, with pleasant episodes often involving some admixture of fear. In terms of hallucinations, pleasant episodes were more likely to involve vestibular-motor sensations (i.e. illusory body movements) and some individuals reported an ability to induce these hallucinations. Contrary to expectation, neither lower trauma symptomatology nor higher levels of reported life satisfaction predicted pleasant sleep paralysis. However, the ability to lucid dream and higher levels of trait openness to new experiences appeared to make pleasant episodes more likely. Clinical implications are discussed.

Time Well Spent versus a Life Considered: Changing Subjective Well-Being in China

Using unique longitudinal survey data that employed the Day Reconstruction Method (DRM) to measure experienced utility in rural China, this study reveals striking differences in the trends for life satisfaction and experienced utility. Consistent with previous studies, we find that reported life satisfaction changed little over the period 2006 to 2009. However, experienced utility increased significantly during the same period. The improvement in experienced utility is due mainly to more positive feelings about specific activities, rather than changes in the time spent on different activities. These findings are consistent with the predictions of aspiration adaptation theory.

Multi-dimensional well-being associated with economic dependence on ecosystem services in deltaic social-ecological systems of Bangladesh

While the benefits humans gain from ecosystem functions and processes are critical in natural resource-dependent societies with persistent poverty, ecosystem services as a pathway out of poverty remain an elusive goal, contingent on the ecosystem and mediated by social processes. Here, we investigate three emerging dimensions of the ecosystem service-poverty relationship: economic contribution of provisioning ecosystem services to the household livelihood mix, social-ecological systems producing different bundles of ecosystem services and material wealth versus reported life satisfaction. We analyse these relationships in Bangladesh, using data from a bespoke 1586-household survey, stratified by seven social-ecological systems in the delta coastal region. We create poverty lines to ensure comparability with traditional poverty measures that overlook environmental factors and subjective measurements of well-being. We find that any contribution of ecosystem service-based income to the livelihood mix decreases the likelihood of the incidence of poverty, and of individuals reporting dissatisfaction. We find no relationship between the incidence of material poverty and the specific social-ecological systems, from agriculture to fishery-dominated systems. However, the probability of the household head being dissatisfied was significantly associated with social-ecological system. Individuals living in areas dominated by export-oriented shrimp aquaculture reported lower levels of life satisfaction as an element of their perceived well-being. These results highlight the need for social policy on poverty that accounts for the diversity of outcomes across social-ecological systems, including subjective as well as material dimensions of well-being. National poverty reduction that degrades ecosystem services can have negative implications for the subjective well-being of local populations.

Mamma Mia – A randomized controlled trial of an internet intervention to enhance subjective well-being in perinatal women

ABSTRACT Subjective well-being (SWB) may buffer against psychosocial stressors such as the birth of a child. To assess the effectiveness of an unguided internet intervention (‘Mamma Mia’) on SWB among perinatal women, we investigated (1) whether the intervention group reported higher levels of SWB, (2) whether the effect of Mamma Mia changed over time (i.e. whether the intervention was more effective at some time points), (3) and potential moderators. In total, 1342 pregnant women were randomized to the Mamma Mia or control group. Data were collected at gestational weeks 21–25 and 37, and 1.5, 3, and 6 months after birth. Cognitive well-being was measured using the Satisfaction with Life Scale. Affective well-being was measured using the Positive and Negative Affect Schedule. There were no significant differences in reported life satisfaction and positive affect between the groups. However, participants in the Mamma Mia group showed less negative affect during follow-up, suggesting that Mamma Mia can enhance the affective component of perinatal women’s sense of SWB.

Fear of Robots and Life Satisfaction

The use of robots and in particular next-generation robots in the production of goods and services is increasing. What impact robots are having on people’s quality of life, including workers, is as yet under-explored. This paper provides initial findings examining whether fear of robots is correlated with one aspect of quality of life: life satisfaction. After controlling for individual effects and country effects and using both standard ordinary least squares and a linear multilevel regression model, we find fear of robots correlates with lower reported life satisfaction. There are differences in the fear of robots and life satisfaction by age group, by how long countries have been members of the European Union and by whether we control for attitudes towards other things. We call for more research into attitudes towards technology and new technologies in particular, how these impact on current life satisfaction and other aspects of quality of life and to think more about how technological change and people’s attitudes towards these can be more aligned.

Real estate ownership and life satisfaction in transition countries

Purpose The purpose of this study is to test the hypothesis that real estate ownership contributes to life satisfaction in transition countries. Design/methodology/approach Life in Transition survey data are used to model reported life satisfaction using ordinary least squares, ordered probit, generalized ordered logit and bivariate probit models. The hypothesis tested is whether real estate ownership is associated with greater reported life satisfaction. Findings Empirical results from the variety of empirical models estimated strongly support the hypothesis that real estate ownership is associated with greater reported life satisfaction in transition countries. Research limitations/implications Analysis is limited because life satisfaction is self-reported and specifically for residents of transition countries. Practical implications Results confirm that ownership of a home, second home or land parcel is associated with greater life satisfaction. Social implications Real estate ownership can be an effective means to improve life satisfaction, especially in societies needing such improvements. Originality/value This is the first study of the link between real estate ownership and life satisfaction specifically in transition countries, and using a robust set of empirical models to address issues of ordinal dependent variables, varying coefficient estimates across dependent variable response categories, endogeneity and causality.

Does love conquer all? An experiment testing the association between types of romantic comedy content and reports of romantic beliefs and life satisfaction.

Does love conquer all? An experiment testing the association between types of romantic comedy content and reports of romantic beliefs and life satisfaction.

Associations between school climate and student life satisfaction: resilience and bullying as mediating factors

Because adolescent life satisfaction is associated with important affective, behavioural and health-related outcomes during both adolescence and later life, strategies for promoting adolescent life satisfaction have potential social value. In the study reported in this article, associations are reported between perceptions of the school climate and reports of bullying, resilience and life satisfaction for 6120 Australian adolescents. The study extended past research, which has given little attention to either the relationships between these variables or the relative roles of various school climate sub-constructs. Aspects of the school climate explained 41% of the variance in adolescents’ resilience, 16% of the variance in bully victimisation, and 54% of the variance in life satisfaction. Further, resilience was positively associated with life satisfaction. These results affirm the importance of the psychosocial school climate as a mechanism for improving adolescent (and life-course) outcomes, strengthening calls for schools to give greater attention to improving their psychosocial climates.

Experimentally Increasing Self-Continuity Improves Subjective Well-Being and Protects against Self-Esteem Deterioration from an Ego-Deflating Task

ABSTRACT‘Self-continuity,’ or ‘continuous identity’ is the sense of cross-temporal persistence of identity and is associated with positive mood and decreased suicidality. Few studies have examined whether self-continuity is affected by reviewing cross-temporal patterns of personality traits and if increasing self-continuity improves subjective well-being. Study 1 examined the effects of writing about patterns of cross-temporal personality traits and found that this led to increased future self-continuity and reported life satisfaction. Study 2 examined the effects of a structured interview about cross-temporal personality traits and visualizing past/future selves and found that this led to increased future self-continuity, satisfaction with life, positive mood, and less deterioration in self-esteem after an impossible anagram task. These results suggest that increasing self-continuity may improve psychological health and well-being by increasing identity stability.

Gender(un)gleichheit im Lebensverlauf

This article considers gender inequality through the prism of reported life satisfaction over the whole life cycle. Life satisfaction, an individuals’ global evaluation of their life, is a wellunderstood, oftinvestigated concept that can be considered an output measure. The authors are thereby answering four basic questions: (1) Is subjective wellbeing (SWB) for men and women significantly different? (2) Do we see gender difference movements over time? (3) Are there regional variances? (4) Are there different patterns by age? Overall, using thirty years of representative German data, the authors find little evidence of gender inequality in SWB. But there are surprising disparities in certain age classes. This simple, unconditional, age neutralised analysis offers a different perspective to the more typical econometric analyses and has wider applications, for example considering other issues of inequality and intergroup comparisons.

Are urban landscapes associated with reported life satisfaction and inequalities in life satisfaction at the city level? A cross-sectional study of 66 European cities

With more than half the world's population residing in urban areas and this proportion rising, it is important to understand how well-planned urban environments might improve, and reduce inequalities in, quality of life (QoL). Although studies suggest city-level characteristics hold independent influence on QoL, they generally lack a theoretically informed approach to understanding how the whole city landscape might be implicated, have paid scant attention to inequalities in QoL and often focus on small numbers of cities or countries. We applied theory and methods from landscape ecology to explore associations between cities' land cover/use, residents' reported life satisfaction and within-city socio-economic inequalities in life satisfaction. We joined individual-level responses to the European Urban Audit (EUA) Perception Surveys (2012, 2015) with city-level data from the European Urban Atlas classifying land cover/use into 26 different classes. Our sample included 63,554 people from 66 cities in 28 countries. Multilevel binary logistic models found that specific land use measures were associated with life satisfaction, including the amount of a city which was: residential (OR:0.991, 95%CI 0.984–0.997); isolated structures (OR:1.046, 95 CI 1.002–1.091); roads (OR:0.989, 95%CI 0.982–0.996); pastures (OR: 1.002, 95% CI 1.002–1.003) and herbaceous vegetation (OR:0.998, 95%CI 0.997–0.100). A more even distribution of land cover/use (β: 1.561, 95%CI -3.021 to −0.102) was associated with lower inequality in life satisfaction. This is the first study to theorise and examine how the entire urban landscape may affect levels of and inequalities in wellbeing in a large international sample. Our finding that more equal distribution of land cover/use is associated with lower levels of socio-economic inequality in life satisfaction supports the idea that city environments could be equigenic – that is, could create equality. Our findings can aid urban planners to develop and build cities that can contribute to improving, and narrowing inequalities in, residents' life satisfaction.

Life satisfaction among inbound university students in northern Sweden

Will life satisfaction among international students change after having an experience of studying abroad? Some previous studies indicate inequalities and issues of social mobility embedded in international student mobility. International student mobility implies physical movement and new experiences gained while studying abroad. The ubiquity of international students and their generally successful adaptation makes it necessary to understand how they manage to turn a seemingly difficult situation into satisfying adaptation. One area of such concern that this study sought to explore was the students’ level of satisfaction with life. This study investigated the self-reported life satisfaction of inbound university students upon arrival to a university in northern Sweden and at follow-up six months later. After the study period abroad, the students’ levels of perceived satisfaction with their somatic health and activities of daily living had significantly increased. Higher levels, while non-significant, were found for the domains life as a whole, study situation and economy. These findings may indicate that studying abroad could have an impact on students’ reported life satisfaction, which highlights the value of a period of studying abroad. However, when exploring life satisfaction outcomes among internationally mobile students, it seems pertinent to study student mobility within a context. This study mostly targets international student mobility in a Western/European context.

Can a Multilevel STI/HIV Prevention Strategy for High Risk African American Adolescents Improve Life Satisfaction?

Addressing adolescent sexual risk behaviors in the STI/HIV prevention literature is well documented; however, impacts from interventions on life satisfaction are relatively unexplored. This study examined data (n = 1658) from a randomized, multi-site, multi-level STI/HIV prevention intervention trial (Project iMPAACS) to determine whether increased protective and reduced sexual risk-taking behaviors associated with STI/HIV would also improve self-reported life satisfaction. Taking into account the nested study design and controlling for confounders, a mixed model ANOVA was performed where Total mean life satisfaction scores were analyzed at baseline and 3, 6, 12, and 18 months post-recruitment. Significance levels of 0.05 were used to determine significance and η 2 was used to assess effect size. We hypothesized that as intervention participants engaged in the intentional activity associated with increasing protective behaviors and reducing sexual risk-taking behaviors associated with STI/HIV, life satisfaction reports would also improve over the course of the intervention. A significant main effect for sex was detected (F = 5.19, p = .02, η 2 = .03), along with three interactions: between experimental condition and media intervention (F = 7.96, p = .005, η 2= .04); experimental condition, sex, and media intervention (F = 6.51, p = .01, η 2 = .04); and experimental condition, sex, assessment point, and media intervention (F = 3.23, p = .01, η 2 = .02). With the exception of the control condition, female life satisfaction reports improved from baseline assessments to 18-months post-recruitment, whereas male reports decreased. Project iMPPACS was not designed with the intent on improving participants' life satisfaction. However, study results suggest incorporating strategies to address subjective well-being into future adolescent STI/HIV risk-reduction interventions is beneficial for females and additional research is necessary for males.

Happily Ever After? Life Satisfaction After Childhood Exposure to Violence.

A plethora of research has linked exposure to violence during childhood to negative long-term physical health, mental health, and risk behavior outcomes. Yet, despite estimates that up to 60% of children in the United States will be exposed to violence, little is known about the impact on adult life satisfaction among different racial and ethnic groups, or for different types of violence exposure. This article seeks to explore factors that are associated with life satisfaction in adults who were exposed to family violence or physically abused as a child, while adjusting race, ethnicity, gender, and emotional support. Employing data from the 2010 Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS), links are examined between childhood exposure to violence and adult life satisfaction. For this study, noninstitutionalized adults aged 18 and above in the United States were included. Adults who reported exposure to physical abuse as a child had lower odds of reporting life satisfaction, and those with both physical abuse and interpersonal violence exposure had the lowest odds of long-term life satisfaction. Higher levels of income, emotional support, and marriage were associated with higher levels of satisfaction for both adults who were not exposed to violence as children and those who were. After controlling for sociodemographic factors, adults who identified as Asian or Pacific Islander had higher odds of reporting life satisfaction than their Caucasian counterparts. Implications from these findings include targeting interventions to increase emotional support and social networks for individuals who have been exposed to violence.

Temporal dimensions of reported life satisfaction in a low-income, agricultural environment

Temporal dimensions of reported life satisfaction in a low-income, agricultural environment

‘Subjective Europeanization’: do inner-European comparisons affect life satisfaction?

ABSTRACTResearch in the social sciences has shown recurrently that life satisfaction varies across countries. More recently, the question was raised whether Europeans are comparing living conditions in European countries, and whether these comparisons are affecting the way they assess their personal situation. The paper uses original survey data from nine European countries in order to answer these questions. We analyze the way European citizens assess the living conditions in the various countries under analysis. And we test whether assessments of other countries are significantly interrelated with reported levels of life satisfaction. Finally, we measure the extent to which these effects hold if other reference groups (friends, neighbors, own country) and individual socio-demographic traits are included in the analysis. Our findings paint a mixed picture. Assessing living conditions in other European countries is widely diffused and attests a marked ‘cognitive Europeanization’. However, comparisons with other countries play a less relevant role for reported life satisfaction, when compared to the assessment of the own national economy and the own household situation. Moreover, Switzerland as a non-EU-member is a more significant target than most other EU-members, attesting that we are rather speaking of a European frame of reference, than an EU-related one.

Life satisfaction and inflammation in couples: an actor-partner analysis.

Life satisfaction has been linked to lower cardiovascular disease mortality. However, much less is known about the biological mechanisms linking life satisfaction to physical health. In addition, the dyadic context of life satisfaction has not been considered despite increasing evidence that partners influence each other in health-relevant ways. These questions were addressed with 94 married couples who completed measures of life satisfaction and had their blood drawn for determination of interleukin-6 (IL-6) and C-reactive protein (CRP). Actor-partner models showed that higher actor levels of life satisfaction predicted lower levels of IL-6 and CRP (p's<.05), whereas partner levels of life satisfaction did not predict any measure of inflammation. The actor results were not mediated by marital satisfaction or health behaviors. Finally, no actor×partner interactions were significant and these links were not moderated by marital satisfaction. These data highlight inflammation as a potentially important biological mechanism linking actor reports of life satisfaction to lower cardiovascular mortality.