The Universality of Subjective Wellbeing Indicators: A Multi-disciplinary and Multi-national Perspective

190 Pages·2002·7.24 MB·English

by  Eleonora Gullone, Robert A. Cummins (auth.), Robert A. Cummins (eds.)

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
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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.