Subjective Well-Being: Measuring Happiness, Suffering, and Other Dimensions of Experience (2013)
This National Academies report is available for open access download. — It reviews the current state of research and evaluates methods for the measurement. A range of potential experienced well-being data applications are reviewed, 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.
Book on Time Use, Well-being, Day Reconstruction Method etc
This edited volume includes the Krueger et al (2009) target chapter linked below and peer commentary. Can be browsed via the Google Books link.– A. Krueger (ed.) (2009). Measuring the subjective well-being of nations: National accounts of time use and well-being. Chicago: Chicago University Press.
Krueger, Kahneman, Schkade, Schwarz, & Stone (2009). National time accounting: The currency of life.
This chapter proposes a new approach for measuring features of society’s subjective well-being, based on time allocation and affective experience. We call this approach National Time Accounting (NTA). National Time Accounting is a set of methods for measuring, comparing and analyzing how people spend and experience their time — across countries, over historical time, or between groups of people within a country at a given time. The approach is based on evaluated time use, or the flow of emotional experience during daily activities. After reviewing evidence on the validity of subjective well-being measures, we present and evaluate diary-based survey techniques designed to measure individuals’ emotional experiences and time use. We illustrate NTA with: (1) a new cross-sectional survey on time use and emotional experience for a representative sample of 4,000 Americans; (2) historical data on the amount of time devoted to various activities in the United States since 1965; and (3) a comparison of time use and wellbeing in the United States and France. In our applications, we focus mainly on the Uindex, a measure of the percentage of time that people spend in an unpleasant state, defined as an instance in which the most intense emotion is a negative one. The U-index helps to overcome some of the limitations of interpersonal comparisons of subjective well-being. National Time Accounting strikes us as a fertile area for future research because of advances in subjective measurement and because time use data are now regularly collected in many countries. Published with peer commentary in A. Krueger (ed), Measuring the subjective well-being of nations: National accounts of time use and well-being. Chicago University Press, 2009.
Kahneman, Krueger, Schkade, Schwarz, & Stone (2004). Day Reconstruction Method.
The Day Reconstruction Method (DRM) assesses how people spend their time and how they experience the various activities and settings of their lives, combining features of time-budget measurement and experience sampling. Participants systematically reconstruct their activities and experiences of the preceding day with procedures designed to reduce recall biases. The DRM’s utility is shown by documenting close correspondences between the DRM reports of 909 employed women and established results from experience sampling. An analysis of the hedonic treadmill shows the DRM’s potential for well-being research. — Kahneman, D., Krueger, A. B., Schkade, D., Schwarz, N., & Stone, A. A. (2004). A survey method for characterizing daily life experience: The Day Reconstruction Method (DRM). Science, 306 (3 December 2004), 1776-1780
Day Reconstruction Method Documentation
This report documents the instrument used in a typical DRM study. The instrument shown is the basis of Kahneman et al, Science, 2004 (linked above)
The belief that high income is associated with good mood is widespread but mostly illusory. People with above-average income are relatively satisfied with their lives but are barely happier than others in moment-to-moment experience, tend to be more tense, and do not spend more time in particularly enjoyable activities. Moreover, the effect of income on life satisfaction seems to be transient. We argue that people exaggerate the contribution of income to happiness because they focus, in part, on conventional achievements when evaluating their life or the lives of others. –Kahneman, D., Krueger, A., Schkade, D., Schwarz, N., & Stone, A. (2006). Would you be happier if you were richer? A focusing illusion. Science, 132 (30 June 2006), 1908-1910.
To date, diurnal rhythms of emotions have been studied with real-time data collection methods mostly in relatively small samples. The Day Reconstruction Method (DRM), a new survey instrument that reconstructs the emotions of a day, is examined as a method for enabling large-scale investigations of rhythms. Diurnal cycles were observed for 12 emotion adjectives in 909 women over a working day. Bimodal patterns with peaks at noon and evenings were detected for positive emotions; peaks in negative emotions were found at mid-morning and mid-afternoon. A V-shaped pattern was found for tired and an inverted U-shaped pattern for competent. Several diurnal patterns from prior studies were replicated. The DRM appears to be a useful tool for the study of emotions. — Stone, A. A., Schwartz, J. E., Schwarz, N., Schkade, D., Krueger, A., & Kahneman, D. (2006). A population approach to the study of emotion: Diurnal rhythms of a working day examined with the Day Reconstruction Method (DRM). Emotion, 6, 139-149.
Schwarz, Kahneman, & Xu (2009), Global and episodic reports of hedonic experience.
This chapter reviews differences between global and episodic reports and illustrates them with research with the Day Reconstruction Method. –Schwarz, N., Kahneman, D., & Xu, J. (2009). Global and episodic reports of hedonic experience. In R. Belli, D. Alwin, & F. Stafford (eds.)(2009). Using calendar and diary methods in life events research. Newbury Park, CA: Sage.
Xu & Schwarz (2009). Do we really need a reason to indulge?
We document consistent discrepancies between consumers’ predicted, actual, and remembered feelings related to indulgence episodes and conceptualize the underlying processes. Consistent with previous research, consumers expect more negative and less positive feelings when they indulge themselves without rather than with a reason (study 1) or as a consolation for poor performance rather than a reward for high effort (study 2). However, episodic reports pertaining to the last indulgence episode show no influence of having vs. not having a reason (study 1), nor do concurrent reports show a difference between indulging as a consolation vs. a reward (study 2). When asked how they “usually” feel when indulging with vs. without a reason (study 3), consumers’ global memories are consistent with their expectations rather than their actual experience. These findings bear on the conditions under which consumers learn from experience. — Xu, J., & Schwarz, N. (2009). Do we really need a reason to indulge? Journal of Marketing Research, 46, 25-36.
Schwarz (2008). Intuitions about the happy life — and why we get it wrong (Video; in German).
A lecture on German TV, available as a streaming video.
Additional materials on the Day Reconstruction Method and related research are available at the homepage of Alan Krueger at Princeton.