The Effect of Response Biases on the Variation in Life Satisfaction

Abstract

Although life satisfaction is an empirically well-studied happiness concept, there are still open questions regarding the variation in life satisfaction. Using life satisfaction data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP), I examine the extent to which the variation in life satisfaction is influenced by biases arising from the design and implementation of the life satisfaction survey using a variety of methodological approaches, including dis- tributional analysis, descriptive statistics, Markov transition probabilities, and logistic regression. As a result, I show that the presence of an interviewer during the survey can lead to significant positive and non-adapting changes in life satisfaction. The eleven-point integer scale on which life satisfaction is measured has an even more decisive influence. I show that people use the midpoints of the scale to evaluate their lives, balancing the quality of their lives between good and bad. This has implications for the variation in general. It seems implausible that, on a scale of 0 to 10, average life satisfaction scores of more than 8 can be achieved in the long term. Ultimately thus the scale also effects adaptive processes. I furthermore show that the variation in dissatisfaction and satisfaction follow different patterns. In order to gain a more nuanced understanding of the causes, it may be useful for future research to analyse periods of satisfaction and dissatisfaction with life separately.