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Title: Reliability, validity, and variability of the subjective well-being questions in the 2010 well-being module of the American Time Use Survey
Citation Type: Journal Article
Publication Year: 2015
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Abstract: As part of the wider range of investigations to produce generally acceptable standards for measuring affective well-being, time diary surveys have tested several approaches to measuring subjective well-being during diary days. As an alternative to asking one or two questions about all activities included in a limited number of time diary surveys conducted since the 1980s, the 2010 module of the American Time Use Survey asked six emotion questions about three activities, as first proposed by Kahneman and Krueger. The perception questions captured how happy, meaningful, sad, tired, stressed, or in pain respondents felt on a 7-point scale. To evaluate this approach, this research examined the reliability and validity of the six emotion questions, and assessed their variability across activities. Using principal component analysis, we assessed the associations among items and obtained two activity-level components with Cronbachs alphas of .68 and .59 and two respondent-level components with Cronbachs alphas of .74 and .65. To test validity, we regressed self-rated health on the underlying components and socio-demographic controls. Both of the respondent level components were significantly associated with better health (Odds Ratio = 1.81, 1.27). Using each of the perceptions individually, we found that happiness, meaningfulness, and lack of fatigue, stress, and pain were related to better health. The average well-being score also significantly predicted better health. Finally, we examined the coefficients of variation to assess the variability in the well-being measures across activities. Implications of the subjective well-being measures and limitations of this study were discussed.
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Authors: Hofferth, S.; Flood, S.; Fisher, K.; Lee, Y.
Periodical (Full): Social Indicators Research
Issue: 3
Volume: 126
Pages: 1355-1373
Data Collections: IPUMS Time Use - ATUS
Topics: Health, Methodology and Data Collection
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