Subjective well-being : measuring happiness, suffering, and other dimensions of experience

Author(s)

• Stone, Arthur A.
• Mackie, C. J.
• National Research Council (U.S.). Panel on Measuring Subjective Well-Being in a Policy-Relevant Framework
• National Research Council (U.S.). Committee on National Statistics

Bibliographic Information

Subjective well-being : measuring happiness, suffering, and other dimensions of experience

Panel on Measuring Subjective Well-Being in a Policy-Relevant Framework, Arthur A. Stone and Christopher Mackie, editors ; Committee on National Statistics, Division of Behavioral and Social Sciences and Education, National Research Council of the National Academies

The National Academies Press, c2013

• : [pbk]

Note

Includes bibliographical references (p. 125-135)

Description and Table of Contents

Description

Subjective well-being refers to how people experience and evaluate their lives and specific domains and activities in their lives. This information has already proven valuable to researchers, who have produced insights about the emotional states and experiences of people belonging to different groups, engaged in different activities, at different points in the life course, and involved in different family and community structures. Research has also revealed relationships between people's self-reported, subjectively assessed states and their behavior and decisions. Research on subjective well-being has been ongoing for decades, providing new information about the human condition. During the past decade, interest in the topic among policy makers, national statistical offices, academic researchers, the media, and the public has increased markedly because of its potential for shedding light on the economic, social, and health conditions of populations and for informing policy decisions across these domains. Subjective Well-Being: Measuring Happiness, Suffering, and Other Dimensions of Experience explores the use of this measure in population surveys. This report reviews the current state of research and evaluates methods for the measurement. In this report, a range of potential experienced well-being data applications are cited, from cost-benefit studies of health care delivery to commuting and transportation planning, environmental valuation, and outdoor recreation resource monitoring, and even to assessment of end-of-life treatment options. Subjective Well-Being finds that, whether used to assess the consequence of people's situations and policies that might affect them or to explore determinants of outcomes, contextual and covariate data are needed alongside the subjective well-being measures. This report offers guidance about adopting subjective well-being measures in official government surveys to inform social and economic policies and considers whether research has advanced to a point which warrants the federal government collecting data that allow aspects of the population's subjective well-being to be tracked and associated with changing conditions.

Table of Contents

• 1 Front Matter
• 2 Summary
• 3 1 Introduction
• 4 2 Conceptualizing Experienced (or Hedonic) Well-Being
• 5 3 Measuring Experienced Well-Being
• 6 4 Additional Conceptual and Measurement Issues
• 7 5 Subjective Well-Being and Policy
• 8 6 Data Collection Strategies
• 9 References
• 10 Appendix A: Experienced Well-Being Questions and Modules from Existing Surveys
• 11 Appendix B: The Subjective Well-Being Moduleof the American Time Use Survey:Assessment for Its Continuation
• 12 Appendix C: Biographical Sketches of Panel Members
• 13 Committee on National Statistics

by "Nielsen BookData"

• NCID: BB23608746
• ISBN:
  • 9780309294461
• LCCN: 2013454738
• Country Code: us
• Title Language Code: eng
• Text Language Code: eng
• Place of Publication: Washington, D.C.
• Pages/Volumes: xiii, 188 p.
• Size: 23 cm
• Classification:
  • DC23 : 320.6
  • LCC : BF575.H27
• Subject Headings:
  • LCSH : Political planning
  • LCSH : Policy sciences
  • LCSH : Well-being
  • LCSH : Quality of life