The aim of this paper is to construct a notion of well-being in the workplace applicable to Taiwan society as an example of the Chinese cultural communities. The construction involves the following steps. Different domains of the well-being in the workplace are identified based on the results of workplace research. A set of integrative values…

Measurement of affective states in everyday life is of fundamental importance in many types of quality of life, health, and psychological research. Ecological momentary assessment (EMA) is the recognized method of choice, but the respondent burden can be high. The day reconstruction method (DRM) was developed by Kahneman and colleagues ("Science,"…

Despite a broad theoretical literature on multidimensional inequality and a widespread belief that welfare is not synonymous to income--not the least in a developing context--empirical inequality examinations rarely includes several welfare attributes. We explore three techniques on how to evaluate multidimensional inequality using Zambian…

Generalized trust features as the most prominent attitudinal element of social capital, and as such the concept is widely used in comparative research. In this article we investigate the cross-cultural equivalence of the three-item scale on generalized trust that is included in the European Social Survey 2002 and 2004 waves. The use of metric…

Among the surprising results of research on the relation between a person's material circumstances and his or her subjective well-being was the finding that this relationship appears to be rather weak (throughout this paper the terms "(general) life satisfaction", "(subjective) satisfaction", "happiness" and…

This article reports the findings of a survey administering the personal well-being index (PWI) in six Chinese cities (N = 3,390) to ascertain the personal well-being of China's urban population. The specific aims of the study were: (a) ascertain whether Chinese urban residents are satisfied with their lives; (b) validate the PWI using an urban…

For more than three decades now, sociologists, politicians and economists have used a wide range of statistical and econometric techniques to analyse and measure the quality of life of individuals with the aim of obtaining useful instruments for social, political and economic decision making. The aim of this paper is to analyse the advantages and…

Research over several decades about subjective life satisfaction has led to the conclusion that the majority of people seem to be satisfied with their lives when their social and physical needs are met. In empirical studies which have used self-report instruments, this trend is reflected in respondents' consistent preference for the positive end…

For most individuals, housing is the largest consumption and investment item of their lifetime and, as a result, housing satisfaction is an important component of their quality of life. The purpose of this paper then is to investigate the determinants of individual housing satisfaction as a particular domain of satisfaction with life as a whole,…

The International Well-being Index (IWI) measures both personal and national well-being. It comprises two subscales: the Personal Well-being Index (PWI) and the National Well-being Index (NWI). The aim of this paper is to test the psychometric properties (validity and reliability) of the translated scale in Austria. Convergent validity is assessed…

A meta-analysis of published studies that reported correlations between self-ratings and informant ratings of well-being (life-satisfaction, happiness, positive affect, negative affect) was performed. The average self-informant correlation based on 44 independent samples and 81 correlations for a total of 8,897 participants was r = 0.42 [99%…

In recent years, the interest grew in research on measuring the "quality of life" (QOL) in cities. This interest comes from the success QOL measurement achieved in understanding communities' needs, tracking changes in different aspects of life and assessing the most desired types of future development among citizens. This research…

This paper analyses and compares the measurement of indicators and variables in the construction of education index in Human Development Index (HDI) at the global, national and 18 sub-national human development reports in India since 1990. The results show non-comparability of measurement of the education indicators and variables. This implies…

In recent years, we have seen how the quality of work life has been focused and defined by the European Commission (EC). In our study we compare the EC definition with the academic one and try to see how close they are. We also analyse the possibility of applying the institutional definition to the Spanish case through the development of specific…

This article carries out a multidimensional analysis of welfare based on the social indicators approach aimed at assessing the quality of life in the 25 member countries of the European Union. It begins with description of the social indicators approach and provides some specifications on its most controversial points. It then specifies the…