Well-being is more than happiness and life satisfaction: a multidimensional analysis of 21 countries

Abstract

Background: Recent trends on measurement of well-being have elevated the scientific standards and rigor associated with approaches for national and international comparisons of well-being. One major theme in this has been the shift toward multidimensional approaches over reliance on traditional metrics such as single measures (e.g. happiness, life satisfaction) or economic proxies (e.g. GDP). Methods: To produce a cohesive, multidimensional measure of well-being useful for providing meaningful insights for policy, we use data from 2006 and 2012 from the European Social Survey (ESS) to analyze well-being for 21 countries, involving approximately 40,000 individuals for each year. We refer collectively to the items used in the survey as multidimensional psychological well-being (MPWB). Results: The ten dimensions assessed are used to compute a single value standardized to the population, which supports broad assessment and comparison. It also increases the possibility of exploring individual dimensions of well-being useful for targeting interventions. Insights demonstrate what may be masked when limiting to single dimensions, which can create a failure to identify levers for policy interventions. Conclusions: We conclude that both the composite score and individual dimensions from this approach constitute valuable levels of analyses for exploring appropriate policies to protect and improve well-being.

Does Vigorous Physical Activity Contribute to Adolescent Life Satisfaction?

“…Adolescent girls are at the greatest risk, especially in the context of experiencing negative feelings and low self-concept and life satisfaction, and in relation to self-harming [ 55 ]. In the Nordic countries, which have an overall high level of LS [ 56 ], the group at the greatest risk of decreasing LS is 15-year-old girls [ 28 ]. It turns out that age and gender have a high level of discriminatory power for life satisfaction and self-rated health and are both significant moderators between adolescents’ health and well-being [ 57 ].…”

Resilience and mental health among juveniles: role of strategies for coping with stress

“…Mental well-being is divided into two dimensions: the first includes states of happiness and life satisfaction (hedonic dimension), and the second includes positive psychological functioning, good relations with others and self-realisation/acceptance (eudaimonic dimension) [ 51 ]. Mental well-being goes beyond hedonism and the pursuit of happiness or pleasurable experience and beyond life satisfaction: it encompasses how well people are functioning, known as eudaimonia [ 52 ]. In turn, life satisfaction is defined as a global assessment of an individual's quality of life based on the criteria chosen by that person [ 53 ].…”

A behavioral approach to personalizing public health

“…When it comes to complex behavioral problems, particularly among disadvantaged populations, the most effective interventions should combine population approaches that target general causes with personalization that targets individualized, context-dependent factors (Pence et al, 2018). In many cases, this is in direct response to the rule that those doing best in a population are more similar and those at greatest risk are more varied (King et al, 2013;Ruggeri et al, 2020b). To be absolutely explicit, we do not make any argument that one approach should replace another.…”