Social Desirability and Central Tendency Bias in the Survey and Variation of Life Satisfaction

Abstract

Although life satisfaction is an empirically well-studied happiness concept, there are still open questions regarding the variation in life satisfaction and the influence of variables not included in data sets such as the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP). In this article, I use data from the SOEP to examine the extent to which the variation in life satisfaction is influenced by biases resulting from the design of the life satisfaction survey. Using a variety of methodological approaches, including distributional analysis, descriptive statistics, Markov transition probabilities and logistic regression, I examine the extent to which possible biases due to central tendency or social desirability affect the variation in life satisfaction. This leads me to the following conclusions: 1. People who are interviewed in the presence of an interviewer are more satisfied with their lives than people who are interviewed in writing without an interviewer. This suggests that people express themselves more positively about their well-being in the presence of others. 2. On the 11-point life satisfaction scale, defined as a whole number between 0 and 10, respondents prefer to choose points 5 and 8, which are the mid-points of the scale, and they choose them more often than other points. This is important for adaptation research: it suggests that people prefer to report life satisfaction that is balanced between good and bad, leaving room for improvement even in satisfied states. Social desirability and central tendency bias have a stronger influence on the variation of life satisfaction than many of the happiness correlates examined. In terms of growth in life satisfaction, point 8 seems to be the maximum on average. A higher value is implausible based on the results of the study.