IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/somere/v6y1978i3p365-407.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Structure of Well-Being

Author

Listed:
  • Ronald S. Burt

    (University of California, Berkeley)

  • James A. Wiley

    (Human Population Laboratory, California State Department of Health)

  • Michael J. Minor

    (National Opinion Research Center)

  • James R. Murray

    (National Opinion Research Center)

Abstract

A third aspect of individual well-being within a society is analyzed in terms of twelve sequential national probability surveys of individual well-being in the United States from April 1973 through May 1974. This third aspect, in contrast to (1) absolute levels of well-being and (2) feelings of power over individual well-being (i.e., anomie, alienation, and soon), concerns the cultural framework of interrelated dimensions, here discussed as the "structure of well-being," in terms of which individuals evaluate well-being within a society. Alternative structures of well-being for the United States are drawn from existing research and examined for adequacy in describing covariation among twelve indicators of satisfaction with various aspects of life activities. A structure composed of four dimensions; positive affect, negative affect, satisfaction with domains, and general satisfaction, is found to be most adequate of the alternatives. The expected relative stability of the structure of well-being over the twelve sequential national surveys is demonstrated. Implications of the analysis for the study of individual well-being are discussed.

Suggested Citation

  • Ronald S. Burt & James A. Wiley & Michael J. Minor & James R. Murray, 1978. "Structure of Well-Being," Sociological Methods & Research, , vol. 6(3), pages 365-407, February.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:somere:v:6:y:1978:i:3:p:365-407
    DOI: 10.1177/004912417800600305
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/004912417800600305
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1177/004912417800600305?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. William J. Baumol, 1974. "An Overview of the Results on Consumption, Health, and Social Behavior," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 9(2), pages 253-264.
    2. Ronald Burt, 1977. "Feelings of power in a corporate society," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 4(1), pages 317-336, January.
    3. K. Jöreskog, 1969. "A general approach to confirmatory maximum likelihood factor analysis," Psychometrika, Springer;The Psychometric Society, vol. 34(2), pages 183-202, June.
    4. Frank Andrews, 1974. "Social indicators of perceived life quality," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 1(3), pages 279-299, December.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Zhang, XiaoLi & Liu, ChenGuang & Li, WenJuan & Evans, Steve & Yin, Yong, 2017. "Effects of key enabling technologies for seru production on sustainable performance," Omega, Elsevier, vol. 66(PB), pages 290-307.
    2. Yu-Chuan Chen & Yung-Ho Chiu & Tzu-Han Chang & Tai-Yu Lin, 2023. "Sustainable Development, Government Efficiency, and People’s Happiness," Journal of Happiness Studies, Springer, vol. 24(4), pages 1549-1578, April.
    3. Soo Tan & Siok Tambyah & Ah Kau, 2006. "The Influence of Value Orientations and Demographics on Quality-of-Life Perceptions: Evidence from a National Survey of Singaporeans," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 78(1), pages 33-59, August.
    4. Orose Leelakulthanit & Ralph Day, 1993. "Cross cultural comparisons of quality of life of Thais and Americans," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 30(1), pages 49-70, September.
    5. Amber Mosewich & Valerie Hadd & Peter Crocker & Bruno Zumbo, 2013. "Invariance Testing of the SF-36 Health Survey in Women Breast Cancer Survivors: Do Personal and Cancer-related Variables Influence the Meaning of Quality of Life Items?," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 110(2), pages 559-577, January.
    6. S. Lee & R. Jennrich, 1979. "A study of algorithms for covariance structure analysis with specific comparisons using factor analysis," Psychometrika, Springer;The Psychometric Society, vol. 44(1), pages 99-113, March.
    7. Mamiko Takeuchi & Hisakazu Matsushige, 2008. "Effects of Intra-corporate Policies on the Work of Female Employees," OSIPP Discussion Paper 08E009, Osaka School of International Public Policy, Osaka University.
    8. Friedrich Gebhardt, 1971. "Maximum likelihood solution to factor analysis when some factors are completely specified," Psychometrika, Springer;The Psychometric Society, vol. 36(2), pages 155-163, June.
    9. Leo Jeffres & Jean Dobos, 1995. "Separating people's satisfaction with life and public perceptions of the quality of life in the environment," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 34(2), pages 181-211, February.
    10. Sara Casacci & Adriano Pareto, 2018. "Subjective Indicators Construction by Distance Indices: An Application to Life Satisfaction Data," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 137(3), pages 831-846, June.
    11. Bruce Bloxom, 1972. "Alternative approaches to factorial invariance," Psychometrika, Springer;The Psychometric Society, vol. 37(4), pages 425-440, December.
    12. Nelissen, Jan H. M. & Van Den Akker, Piet A. M., 1988. "Are demographic developments influenced by social security?," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 9(1), pages 81-114, March.
    13. Ke-Hai Yuan & Wai Chan, 2005. "On Nonequivalence of Several Procedures of Structural Equation Modeling," Psychometrika, Springer;The Psychometric Society, vol. 70(4), pages 791-798, December.
    14. Ke-Hai Yuan & Ying Cheng & Wei Zhang, 2010. "Determinants of Standard Errors of MLEs in Confirmatory Factor Analysis," Psychometrika, Springer;The Psychometric Society, vol. 75(4), pages 633-648, December.
    15. Loraine Lavallee & P. Hatch & Alex Michalos & Tara McKinley, 2007. "Development of the Contentment with Life Assessment Scale (CLAS): Using Daily Life Experiences to Verify Levels of Self-Reported Life Satisfaction," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 83(2), pages 201-244, September.
    16. John E. Hunter & Gerald M. Gillmore, 1974. "A Memory Search Model of Reliability," Sociological Methods & Research, , vol. 2(3), pages 281-311, February.
    17. Berthold Brenner, 1975. "Quality of affect and self-evaluated happiness," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 2(3), pages 315-331, December.
    18. Rapson Gomez & Taylor Brown & Shaun Watson & Vasileios Stavropoulos, 2022. "Confirmatory factor analysis and exploratory structural equation modeling of the factor structure of the Questionnaire of Cognitive and Affective Empathy (QCAE)," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 17(2), pages 1-18, February.
    19. Sik-Yum Lee, 1980. "Estimation of covariance structure models with parameters subject to functional restraints," Psychometrika, Springer;The Psychometric Society, vol. 45(3), pages 309-324, September.
    20. Earl Davis & Margret Fine-Davis, 1991. "Social indicators of living conditions in Ireland with European comparisons," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 25(2), pages 103-365, September.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:sae:somere:v:6:y:1978:i:3:p:365-407. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.