Assessing Well-Being

1. Front Matter

   Pages I-XI

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2. Introduction – Measuring Well-Being: Collected Theory and Review Works

   • Ed Diener

   Pages 1-6

3. Temporal Stability and Cross-Situational Consistency of Affective, Behavioral, and Cognitive Responses

   • Ed Diener, Randy J. Larsen

   Pages 7-24

4. Assessing Subjective Well-Being: Progress and Opportunities

   • Ed Diener

   Pages 25-65

5. The Evolving Concept of Subjective Well-Being: The Multifaceted Nature of Happiness

   • Ed Diener, Christie Napa Scollon, Richard E. Lucas

   Pages 67-100

6. Review of the Satisfaction With Life Scale

   • William Pavot, Ed Diener

   Pages 101-117

7. Subjective Well-Being: The Convergence and Stability of Self-Report and Non-Self-Report Measures

   • Ed Sandvik, Ed Diener, Larry Seidlitz

   Pages 119-138

8. Measuring Positive Emotions

   • Richard E. Lucas, Ed Diener, Randy J. Larsen

   Pages 139-155

9. Experience Sampling: Promises and Pitfalls, Strength and Weaknesses

   • Christie Napa Scollon, Chu-Kim Prieto, Ed Diener

   Pages 157-180

10. Life-Satisfaction Is a Momentary Judgment and a Stable Personality Characteristic: The Use of Chronically Accessible and Stable Sources

    • Ulrich Schimmack, Ed Diener, Shigehiro Oishi

    Pages 181-212

11. Happiness is the Frequency, Not the Intensity, of Positive Versus Negative Affect

    • Ed Diener, Ed Sandvik, William Pavot

    Pages 213-231

12. Income’s Differential Influence on Judgments of Life Versus AffectiveWell-Being

    • Ed Diener, Daniel Kahneman, Raksha Arora, James Harter, William Tov

    Pages 233-246

13. New Measures of Well-Being

    • Ed Diener, Derrick Wirtz, Robert Biswas-Diener, William Tov, Chu Kim-Prieto, Dong-won Choi et al.

    Pages 247-266

14. Conclusion: Future Directions in Measuring Well-Being

    • Ed Diener

    Pages 267-274

The Sandvik, Diener, and Seidlitz (1993) paper is another that has received widespread attention because it documented the fact that self-report well-being scales correlate with a number of other methods of measuring the same concepts, such as with reports by knowledgeable “informants” (family and friends), expe- ence sampling measurement, and the memory for good versus bad life events. A single factor was found to underlie measures using different methods, and a n- ber of different well-being self-report measures were found to correlate with the non-self-report measures. Thus, although the self-report measures of well-being are imperfect, and can be in uenced by response artifacts, they have substantial validity as shown by their correlations with measurements based on alternative methods. Whereas the Pavot and Diener article reviewed the Satisfaction with Life Scale, the Lucas, Diener, and Larsen (2003) paper reviews various approaches to assessing positive emotions. As we wrote in the chapter in this volume in which we present new measures, we do not consider any of the existing measures of positive affect to be entirely acceptable for measuring subjective well-being in the affect area, and that is why we have created and validated a new measure.

• Emotions
• emotion
• happiness
• life satisfaction
• personality
• quality of life
• subjective well-being
• well-being

From the reviews: “Assessing Well-Being, is concerned with the measurement of life satisfaction. … Also, newly written, they point the way for future research. … Certainly academic researchers interested in well-being will find them extremely useful. … The reprinted book chapters are not so readily available, so their inclusion is a real plus. The audience should extend beyond research psychologists and include policy makers as well as interested members of the general public. … the collected works of Ed Diener are timely, impressive, and useful.” (Christopher Peterson, PsycCRITIQUES, Vol. 54 (50), 2009)

• Dept. Psychology, University of Illinois, Champaign, USA

  Ed Diener

Ed Diener is the Joseph R. Smiley Distinguished Professor of Psychology at the University of Illinois. He received his doctorate at the University of Washington in 1974, and has been a faculty member at the University of Illinois for the past 34 years. Dr. Diener was the president of both the International Society of Quality of Life Studies and the Society of Personality and Social Psychology. Currently he is the president of the International Positive Psychology Association. Dr. Diener was the editor of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology and the Journal of Happiness Studies, and he is the founding editor of Perspectives on Psychological Science. Diener has over 240 publications, with about 190 being in the area of the psychology of well-being, and is listed as one of the most highly cited psychologists by the Institute of Scientific Information with over 12,000 citations to his credit. He won the Distinguished Researcher Award from the International Society of Quality of Life Studies, the first Gallup Academic Leadership Award, and the Jack Block Award for Personality Psychology. Dr. Diener also won several teaching awards, including the Oakley-Kundee Award for Undergraduate Teaching at the University of Illinois.

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