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THE UNIVERSALITY OF SUBJECTIVE WELLBEING INDICATORS Social Indicators Research Series Volume 16 General Editor: ALEX C. MICHALOS University ofN orthern British Columbia, Prince George, Canada Editors: ED DIENER University ofI llinois, Champaign, U.S.A. WOLFGANG GLATZER 1. W. Goethe University, Frankfurt am Main, Germany TORBJORN MOUM University of Oslo, Norway MIRJAM A.G. SPRANGERS University ofA msterdam, The Netherlands JOACHIM VOGEL Central Bureau ofS tatistics, Stockholm, Sweden RUUTVEENHOVEN Erasmus University, Rotterdam, The Netherlands This new series aims to provide a public forum for single treatises and collections of papers on social indicators research that are too long to be published in our journal Social Indicators Research. Like the journal, the book series deals with statistical assessments of the quality of life from a broad perspective. It welcomes the research on a wide variety of substantive areas, including health, crime, housing, education, family life, leisure activities, transportation, mobility, economics, work, religion and environmental issues. These areas of research will focus on the impact of key issues such as health on the overall quality of life and vice versa. An international review board, consisting of Ruut Veenhoven, Joachim Vogel, Ed Diener, Torbjorn Mourn, MirjamA.G. Sprangers and Wolfgang Glatzer, will ensure the high quality of the series as a whole. THE UNIVERSALITY OF SUBJECTIVE WELLBEING INDICATORS A Multi-disciplinary and Multi-national Perspective Editedby ELEONORA GULLONE School 0/ Psychology, Psychiatry and Psychological Medicine, Monash University, Australia and ROBERT A. CUMMINS School 0/ Psychology, Deakin University, Australia SPRINGER SCIENCE+BUSINESS MEDIA, B.V. A C.I.P. Catalogue record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. ISBN 978-94-010-3960-4 ISBN 978-94-010-0271-4 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-94-010-0271-4 Printed on acid-free paper All Rights Reserved © 2002 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht Originally published by Kluwer Academic Publishers in 2002 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 18t edition 2002 No part of this work may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, microfilming, recording or otherwise, without written permission from the Publisher, with the exception of any material supplied specifiCally for the purpose ofbeing entered and executed on a computer system, for exclusive use by the purchaser of the work. TABLE OF CONTENTS Biographical summaries of contributors to this volume Editorial- The Universality of Subjective Wellbeing 5 Eleanora Gullone and Robert A. Cummins A model of subjective well-being homeostasis: the role of personality 7 Robert A. Cummins, Eleonora Gullone and Anna L.D. Lau Subjective quality of life: the affective dimension 47 Paul Bramston Theoretical basis for the measurement of quality of life 63 Jouko Kajanoja The concept of life satisfaction across cultures: exploring its diverse meaning and relation to economic wealth 8 I Joar Vittersf'l, Espen Roysamb and Ed Diener Quality of life in residential care 105 Edward Helmes and Lynne Austin The universality of quality of life: an empirical approach using the WHOQOL 129 MJ. Power, M Bullinger and the WHOQOL group Predicting quality of work life: from work conditions to self-regulation 151 Georgia Pomaki and Stan Maes Substitution, buffers and subjective well-being: a hierarchical approach 175 Anna Nieboer and Siegwart Lindenberg BIOGRAPHICAL SUMMARIES OF CONTRIBUTORS TO THIS VOLUME Lynne Austin is currently completing a Masters Degree in Clinical Geropsychology at Edith Cowan University. Her specific area of interest is in the impact of residential care on quality of life. Paul Bramston, PhD, has been in the Psychology Department at the University of Southern Queensland for 10 years and has published widely in the area of emotions such as stress and depression in aged and disabled populations. More recently he has turned his attention to positive emotions such as happiness and well- being in these groups. He has also completed some ground breaking explorations into sense of community and belonging among people who are aged and/or disabled. Robert A. Cummins, PhD, Professor of Psychology, holds a Personal Chair at Deakin University in Melbourne. He is an international authority on quality of life, most particularly in the area of subjective wellbeing, and has published widely in this area. He is a Fellow of both the Australian Psychological Society and the International Society for Quality of Life Studies. He also directs the Australian Centre on Quality of Life at Deakin University (http://acqol.deakin.edu.au) and is Convenor of the International Wellbeing Group which is attempting to evolve a cross-culturally valid index to measure population subjective wellbeing. Ed Diener, PhD, is Alumni Professor of Psychology at the University of Illinois. Dr. Diener received his Ph.D. at the University of Washington in Seattle in 1974, and has been a faculty member at the University of Illinois ever since. He is past- president of the International Society of Quality of Life Studies, and is past- president of the Society of Personality and Social Psychology (and Division 8 of APA). Professor Diener is the editor of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology (1998-2003) and is also editor of Journal of Happiness Studies. He won the 2000 Distinguished Researcher Award from the International Society of Quality of Life Studies, and a distinguished alumni award from California State University at Fresno. In 200 I, Professor Diener was selected to speak in the American Psychological Association's Distinguished Lecture Series. Diener has about 140 publications, of which about 90 are in the area of subjective well-being (SWB). He was listed as the second most published author in the first 30 years of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, and currently has 41 publications in this journal. Professor Diener is the Chair of the Positive Experience Network of the Positive Psychology Initiative. His citation count is approximately 5,000. Eleonora Gullone, PhD, is Associate Professor in the Department of Psychology at Monash University, Melbourne, Australia. She has published extensively in the area of child and adolescent emotional development with particular a focus on fear, anxiety, and depression. More recently, she has shifted her research attention to psychological well-being. Her specific interests within this broad area of Positive Psychology focus upon the promotion of human well-being through interaction with the natural environment and non-human species. 1 E. Gullone and RA. Cummins (eds.}. The Universality a/Subjective Wellbeing Indicators, 1-3. © 2002 Kluwer Academic Publishers. 2 BIOGRAPHICAL SUMMARIES Edward Helmes, PhD is an Associate Professor in Psychology. He joined the School of Psychology at James Cook University in 2001 after 5 years with the School of Psychology, Edith Cowan University that in tum fol1owed his earlier career of work with hospitals and the University of Western Ontario in Canada. His publications are in several areas, including ageing, neuropsychology, personality, and psychological assessment. His interests in the area of this book arise from his work on the definition and measurement of psychological constructs, such as quality oflife. Jouko Kajanoja (PhD, Po1.Sc.) is senior researcher and director of administration in the Government Institute for Economic Research. He is docent at Helsinki University. His research has combined sociology, philosophy and economics. The main topics have been theories of society, measurement of welfare and characteristics of welfare state. More recently, his focus has been on social capital and relations between good life and working life. Anna Lau, PhD, is Assistant Professor in the Department of Rehabilitation Sciences, at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University. Her main research interests and publications are in the conceptualization and cross-cultural investigation of QOL. She is the Hong Kong coordinator and project investigator for the International Wel1-Being group. She is also involved in several other collaborative projects on QOL that include a comparison of subjective wellbeing between Hong Kong and Australia, and the study of factors or interventions that influence the QOL of elderly people in Hong Kong. Siegwart Lindenberg (PhD Harvard 1971) is Professor of Theoretical Sociology at the University of Groningen. He is member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences. His research interests prominently include informal group processes (he is principle investigator of the Groningen research project "The Future of Community") and the development of theories that underlie human action in the context of groups and social networks (the so-called theory of "social rationality" which includes social production function theory of human goals and framing theory). His recent publications include "Social Rationality Versus Rational Egoism". Pp. 635-668 in: J. Turner (ed.) Handbook of Sociological Theory. New York: Kluwer AcademiclPlenum, 2001. More detailed information is available from his homepage. Stan Maes, PhD, is Professor of Health Psychology at Leiden University, the Netherlands. He produced over 200 scientific publications including 5 books, in various languages, concerning health promotion in school and work settings, doctor patient communication and psychological aspects of/and interventions in patients with chronic diseases. His current work focuses on the development of a new model for the prediction of health behaviour (the health behaviour goal model). Anna Nieboer, PhD, studied Sociology at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands. After her graduation in 1992 she worked at the Interuniversity Center for Social Science and Methodology (lCS). In 1997 she finished her dissertation on the consequences of major life-events in the elderly, after which she worked as a coordinator of the research program "The Future of Community", also conducted at the ICS. Since January 2001 she is an assistant professor at the department of Health Policy, Economics and Organization of Care at Maastricht University. Her main BIOGRAPHICAL SUMMARIES 3 research interests concern the organisation of health care, quality of life and the international comparison of health system performance. Georgia Pomaki is completing her PhD in Health Psychology at Leiden University, the Netherlands. Her thesis concerns predictors of employee health and wellness, and considers both the work environment as well as individual differences. Her theoretical perspective is based in goal theory and her focus is on employee personal goals. To date, her empirical work has centered on teachers and health care employees. Mick Power, PhD, is Professor of Clinical Psychology at the University of Edinburgh, where he directs the doctoral training programme in clinical psychology, and he is a Consultant Clinical Psychologist at the Royal Edinburgh Hospital. He has been one of the co-ordinators of the development of the World Health Organization's measure of quality of life, the WHOQOL. He is the current co- ordinator of a major cross-cultural programme to adapt the WHOQOL for use with older adults and to study active ageing and its impact on quality of life. Espen RllJysamb, PhD, is currently a senior researcher at the Norwegian Institute of Public Health, and Associate Professor at the University of Oslo. He received his PhD in health psychology in 1997, and has been a visiting researcher at University of Michigan (USA), Virginia Commonwealth University (USA) and Birzeit University (Palestine). His research interests include adolescent risk behaviour and mental health, subjective well-being and emotions, heritability, and structural equation modelling. Joar VittersllJ, PhD, Associate Professor in Psychology, has been in the Department of Psychology at the University of Troms0, Norway, since 1999. His research interests are in the area of outdoor recreation and subjective well-being. Acknowledgements: The editors would like to thank Ms Kathy Tempini for her assistance informatting the final document. ELEONORA GULLONE AND ROBERT A. CUMMINS EDITORIAL THE UNIVERSALITY OF SUBJECTIVE WELLBEING When researchers study subjective wellbeing they implicitly make assumptions of universality. In order to embed their research within the current literature, they often ignore the fact, that the reports they cite for this purpose, have employed samples heterogeneous on such variables as culture, age, and wealth, all of which are known to exert powerful influences on sUbjective wellbeing in their own right. Researchers also often ignore the fact that the scales they employ have no demonstrated validity, reliability or sensitivity for the specific populations being sampled for their study. And, often, they have little direct evidence that the construct of subjective wellbeing, as described in the literature, is shared by their research participants. So, to what extent is it valid to combine the findings from different studies in order to create conceptual models? The answer is, we do not know. We assume that there must be a hierarchy of importance. Clearly some sample characteristics are more likely to disrupt universality than others, and some outcome variables are more universal than others. But we are generally uncertain about the relative ordering of such influences for the purpose of combining study findings. This lack of understanding has significant implications for advancing knowledge in this area of study. If study groupings combine highly heterogeneous samples or variables, valid difference variance in criterion variables may be hidden from view, and overly generalised conclusions may result. This topic of universality is addressed by the chapters that follow. The authors take a variety of approaches, which combine to provide a useful and insightful overview of the issues involved. At the most fundamental level is the problem of definition and, as any researcher in the area of subjective wellbeing knows, the variety of definitions can be a great source of frustration. Clearly authors find it hard to agree on the precise character of this construct. However, Kajanoja in his chapter, argues this is not only beneficial but also inevitable. It is beneficial because it extends our understanding of what is possible, and is inevitable since a universal definition is, in his view, an unattainable goa\. There are, however, some points of broad agreement emerging from the literature in regard to the construction and character of subjective wellbeing. One of these is that it can be considered a composite of affective and cognitive processes. Bramston explores and elucidates the evidence for these dual processes as they interact with one another to create our perception of wellbeing. A related area of emerging consensus, and likely universality, is that the affective and cognitive 5 E. Gullone and R.A. Cummins (em.). The Universality o/Subjective Wellbeing Indicators. 5-6. © 2002 Kluwer Academic Publishers. 6 EDITORIAL processes are determinedly managed by the brain to normally create a stable, and predictably positive, outlook on life. How these processes might operate, is addressed by three chapters. Cummins, Gullone and Lau argue for a homeostatic system comprising personality, a set of cognitive buffers, and needs. Nieboer and Lindenberg, on the other hand, while also invoking the concept of buffers, argue for their Social Production Function Theory. Here, subjective wellbeing is maintained through the utilisation of substituted means when the normal means of wellbeing maintenance fail through loss. The final chapter in this set addresses self-regulation of wellbeing in the workplace. Pomaki and Maes use Motivational Systems Theory as the basis for describing the strategies and processes involved in the pursuit of work goals. The achievement of such personal goals are then proposed as core predictors of general wellness. It is interesting to note that the assumption of active wellbeing maintenance, implicit in each of these three chapters, points to another aspect of universality. This is the generally poor relationship between publicly observed objective life quality and subjective wellbeing. Such understanding is highly relevant to researchers or practitioners using subjective wellbeing as a dependent variable, and the chapter by Helmes and Austin exemplifies the difference in the context of old age and the onset of disability. Due to the processes of adaptation, the effects of changed life circumstances on wellbeing are perceived very differently by people who have experienced the change and others who are passive observers. All such measurement, of course, depends on instrumentation, and the extent to which two well-known scales provide universally valid and reliable data is addressed by two chapters. Power, Bulinger, and The WHOQOL Group discuss the WHOQOL instruments, while Vitterso, Roysamb and Diener discuss the Satisfaction with Life Scale. Both groups of authors take a cross-cultural approach and both report aspects of universality within this context. Both also find limitations, as would be expected, but these reports do provide hope that a truly universal scale is a possible achievement. This, indeed, is the aim of the International Wellbeing Group (ht1;p:llacgol.deakin.edu.au). Their progress can be monitored through the website. All in all, this collection of essays provides a good deal of conceptual coverage on issues relating to the universality of subjective wellbeing. While it is clear that understanding in this area is still in its infancy, this collection underscores the importance of better understanding the universality of subjective well-being and its underlying mechanisms and processes. This pursuit will undoubtedly contribute to the development of theory and this, in tum, will foster the emergence of a more coherent and comprehensive understanding that will hopefully transcend disciplinary and methodological boundaries. We thank the authors for contributing to this goal by guiding our thoughts to aspects of subjective wellbeing that might indeed emerge as universals in the near future.

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