Measuring Subjective Well-Being in Later Life

Bram Vanhoutte, James Nazroo & Tarani Chandola University of Manchester

Frailty, Resilience and Inequality in Later Life

Why measure well-being?

• Both transnational organisations and national governments want to broaden measures of progress

• Well-being in several research traditions • Quality of life (Nussbaum & Sen 1993) • Preference Satisfaction (Dolan & Peasgood 2008) • Positive psychology (Seligman & Csikszentmihalyi 2000)

• In the context of later life:

• The third age (Laslett 1989)

What is well-being?

• Subjective well-being is

– mental health more than physical health?

– subjective judgement more than objective conditions?

– a social construct rather than universal truth?

• In everyday life: “How are you?”

Epicurus/Aristippus Aristotle

Hedonic well-being

• Philosophical roots in Aristippus of Cyrene, Epicurus, Bentham, Mill

– Maximalisation of pleasure, minimalisation of suffering

• Affective and cognitive aspect (Diener 1984)

– Both + and – affect, based on moods and emotions

– Individual assessment of quality of life, based on internal criteria (Life satisfaction)

Hedonic

Well-being

Positive

Affect

Affective Cognitive

+ -

Negative

Affect

CES-D GHQ

PANAS

SWLS

Domain

specific Holistic

Eudaimonic well-being

• Different operationalisations, with similar subdimensions: – Psychological Well-being (Ryff & Singer, 1998) – Self-determination Theory (Ryan & Deci, 2000) – In later life: CASP (Hyde, Wiggins, Higgs & Blane, 2003)

• Philosophical roots in Aristotle: • Well-being is about developing one-self and realising one’s potential (Maslow 1968; Erikson 1959)

Eudaimonic Well-being

PWB (Ryff ) SDT (Ryan & Deci) CASP 19 (Wiggins et al.)

Autonomy Autonomy Autonomy

Personal Growth Competence Self-realisation

Self-acceptance

Life Purpose

Environmental mastery Control

Positive Relatedness Relatedness

Pleasure

CASP (Hyde et al., 2003) Control

My age prevents me from doing the

things I would like to.

I feel that what happens to me is out of

control.

I feel free to plan things for the future.

I feel left out of things.

Autonomy

I can do the things that I want to do.

Family responsibilities prevent me

from doing what I want to do.

I feel that I can please myself what I

can do.

My health stops me from doing the

things I want to do.

Shortage of money stops me from

doing the things I want to do.

Pleasure

I look forward to each day.

I feel that my life has meaning.

I enjoy the things that I do.

I enjoy being in the company of others.

On balance, I look back on my life with a

sense of happiness.

Self-realization

I feel full of energy these days.

I choose to do things that I have never

done before.

I feel satisfied with the way my life has

turned out.

I feel that life is full of opportunities.

I feel that the future looks good for me.

Research Questions

• Dimensionality of eudaimonic wellbeing

– What is the best conceptual form of CASP?

• Can CASP, as measure of eudaimonic well-being, be meaningfully compared across European countries?

Reminder: Parameters in CFA

ITEM

LATENT

CONCEPT

FACTOR

LOADING

ERROR

ERROR CORRELATION

Methods

• Confirmatory Factor Analysis

– Dimensionality of CASP

• Identify best model with available items (using cut-off points for indices of fit of Bentler & Hu, 1999)

• Using WLSMV in Mplus (items = categorical)

– Measurement equivalence CASP (Baumgartner & Steenkamp, 1998; Vandenberg & Lance, 2000)

• Constrain parameters of best model step by step across countries

• First ML (items =continuous); then reproduction with WLSMV (items=categorical) (Davidov, 2008)

Q1. Best model CASP? (in ELSA wave 1)

• Problems :

– 3 different versions of CASP:

• Original 19 items (HRS/ELSA)

• Reduced 12 item form (Hyde et al. 2003)

• 12 items in SHARE

– Not accounting for negative wording can inflate number of dimensions

CASP 19 (Hyde et al., 2003) Control

My age prevents me from doing the

things I would like to.

I feel that what happens to me is out of

control.

I feel free to plan things for the future.

I feel left out of things.

Autonomy

I can do the things that I want to do.

Family responsibilities prevent me

from doing what I want to do.

I feel that I can please myself what I

can do.

My health stops me from doing the

things I want to do.

Shortage of money stops me from

doing the things I want to do.

Pleasure

I look forward to each day.

I feel that my life has meaning.

I enjoy the things that I do.

I enjoy being in the company of others.

On balance, I look back on my life with a

sense of happiness.

Self-realization

I feel full of energy these days.

I choose to do things that I have never

done before.

I feel satisfied with the way my life has

turned out.

I feel that life is full of opportunities.

I feel that the future looks good for me.

2

CASP12 SHARE (Hyde et al., 2003) Control

My age prevents me from doing the

things I would like to.

I feel that what happens to me is out of

control.

I feel free to plan things for the future.

I feel left out of things.

Autonomy

I can do the things that I want to do.

Family responsibilities prevent me

from doing what I want to do.

I feel that I can please myself what I

can do.

My health stops me from doing the

things I want to do.

Shortage of money stops me from

doing the things I want to do.

Pleasure

I look forward to each day.

I feel that my life has meaning.

I enjoy the things that I do.

I enjoy being in the company of others.

On balance, I look back on my life with a

sense of happiness.

Self-realization

I feel full of energy these days.

I choose to do things that I have never

done before.

I feel satisfied with the way my life has

turned out.

I feel that life is full of opportunities.

I feel that the future looks good for me.

Possible specifications

• Keeping all the items in, a number of possible specifications of the scale can be tested

– Number of dimensions

– Taking into account negative wording of an item by allowing error correlations/method factor

1 Dimension

1 Dimension with error corr

1 Dimension with method factor

2 Dimensions

3 Dimensions

Results original CASP

• Including correction for negative wording always results in better model

• Two dimensional scale in Share version, 3 dimensional for original 19 items and revised 12 item form

• But:

– Still some weak items present (loading<.4)

– Theoretically contaminated scale? (Age, Money, Family not subjective)

Best possible CASP scale Control

My age prevents me from doing the

things I would like to.

I feel that what happens to me is out of

control.

I feel free to plan things for the future.

I feel left out of things.

Autonomy

I can do the things that I want to do.

Family responsibilities prevent me

from doing what I want to do.

I feel that I can please myself what I

can do.

My health stops me from doing the

things I want to do.

Shortage of money stops me from

doing the things I want to do.

Pleasure

I look forward to each day.

I feel that my life has meaning.

I enjoy the things that I do.

I enjoy being in the company of others.

On balance, I look back on my life with a

sense of happiness.

Self-realization

I feel full of energy these days.

I choose to do things that I have never

done before.

I feel satisfied with the way my life has

turned out.

I feel that life is full of opportunities.

I feel that the future looks good for me.

Results CASP Dimensionality

• Similar:

– Negative wording always important to take into account

– 3 dimensions in full scale (15 items) and reduced scale (10 items)

– 2 dimensions in Share version (9 items)

• But model fit is a lot better, important for equivalence

– (RMSEA <.08 for all)

Levels of measurement equivalence

• Configural:

– Same items load on same factors

• Metric:

– Factor Loadings Equal Across Countries

– > Concept Meaning Similar

• Scalar:

– Item Intercepts / Thesholds equal Across Countries

– > Allows comparison of score on latent concept

Measurement invariance ? (in Share wave 2)

• Separate countries : Ok

• Configural model : Ok

• Metric model: decent fit, but we want a good fit

– Free loading item “I look forward to each day” in Italy (and Belgium in WLSMV)

• Partial Scalar model :

– Free 33 of 126 intercepts

Interpretation partial scalar equivalence

• Items that had to be freed most often point to cultural differences in answering in North and South of Europe

• North: Feel less left out, do more what they want

• South: Feel more left out, do less what they want

Conclusions

• Subjective well-being can be measured accurately using CASP

– Best model is seeing it as

• Self-actualisation (Eudaimonic)

• Control & Autonomy (Eudaimonic)

• Pleasure (Hedonic)

• CASP is partially scalar invariant across Europe, so latent means can be compared

Subjective well-being across Europe (using CASP, Share wave 2)

-0.6

-0.4

-0.2

0

0.2

0.4

0.6

0.8

1

AU GE SW NL ES IT FR DK GR CH BE CZ PL EI

eudaimonic

hedonic