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The Best and Worst Times of Life for South Africans: Evidence of Universal Reference Standards in Evaluations of Personal Well-Being Using Bernheim’s ACSA

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Abstract

Bernheim’s self-anchoring Anamnestic Comparative Self-Assessment (ACSA) measure of personal well-being was applied for the first time in South Africa in 2012 in the nationally representative South African Social Attitudes Survey (SASAS). The SASAS study of ACSA followed on earlier pilot and community studies conducted in the Eastern Cape Province of South Africa. Survey respondents described in their own words the best and worst periods in their lives, which serve as the anchors of the ACSA scale. Respondents’ descriptions of these periods were classified by life domain based on the standard ACSA multiple-choice list (Theuns et al. in: Michalos (ed) Encyclopedia of quality of life and well-being research, Springer, Dordrecht, pp 166–169, 2014). Findings from the study suggest that reference standards matter for the evaluation of personal well-being. Social and material domains represented the dominant choice of reference standards for ACSA ratings. Higher ACSA scores tended to be associated with social reference standards related to the domain of ‘family’ life, and the domains of ‘achievements’ and ‘personal events’, which were mainly studies-related achievements and personal events marking milestones in the transition to adulthood. Lower ACSA scores were most often related to the material reference standards: the domains of ‘money’, ‘work’ (employment), and ‘housing’. Findings from the SASAS study support the notion that the choice of domains as ACSA reference standards may be universal and therefore less culturally sensitive than those of more conventional measures. ‘Family’ events, common to all cultures, represented a dominant South African ACSA anchor choice as has been found in other studies of ACSA. Choice of domains as reference standards tended to be universally defined according to age and passage through the life course rather than particularistically, in line with the large socio-economic divides in South African society. While ACSA scores did reflect the fact that the apartheid-era hierarchy of material disadvantage still persists in South African society, choice of domains as ACSA reference standards were similar among members of all population groups. ACSA was significantly associated with more conventional measures of personal well-being, including life satisfaction, happiness, and the Personal Wellbeing Index. The closest association was with the self-anchoring Cantril ladder that uses a hypothetical, imaginary reference standard instead of ACSA’s real-life, biographical one.

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Notes

  1. Happiness was measured in 15 waves, life satisfaction in 24 waves through the original SAQoL study (1983–2010) and the South African Social Attitudes Survey (SASAS) since 2003.

  2. “Appendix Table 11” below lists the finer categorisation of anchor domains into some 80 sub-domains. An additional online report reviews in detail the nuanced descriptions of ‘best’ and ‘worst’ periods in life according to domains. It reproduces select excerpts from the interviews that reflect not only on different actors’ voices when talking about their lives, but also how cohort and period are associated with individual life experiences. In addition, the online report includes detailed information on the coding of the descriptors of the ACSA anchors in the 2012 SASAS study, which may serve as reference source for future comparative studies of ACSA (Møller and Roberts 2018) See: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/67024.

  3. These cases of death in the family were classified under both the ‘family’ and the ‘safety and security’ headings.

  4. Not shown here, we also examined ACSA anchor choices related to self-rated poverty in the black South African subsample and came to similar conclusions that reference standards tend to be universal ones.

  5. See “Appendix Table 11” that lists sub-categories for the domain of ‘self’ such as more positive outlook on life, religiosity, and maturity.

  6. The average personal 2012 Cantril ratings increased by 0.67 from past to present and by 1.56 from present to future. The national 2012 Cantril ratings also increased, but by a slower rate, from 0.30 from past to present and by 0.52 from present to future (Møller and Roberts 2017, p. 52).

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Acknowledgements

This paper is based on research supported by the National Research Foundation (NRF) of South Africa through the Algeria/South Africa Research Cooperation Programme on Quality of Life in South Africa and Algeria: A Multi Method Approach 2011–2013 (Grant UID 77926) and NRF incentive funding (Grant No. 85343). Views expressed are those of the authors and should not be attributed to the NRF or others. We wish to thank our South Africa/Algeria research partners for collaborating with us on this project. We are grateful to two SIR reviewers for their helpful comments on an earlier version of this paper.

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  1. Institute of Social and Economic Research, Rhodes University, Grahamstown, South Africa

    Valerie Møller

  2. Democracy, Governance and Service Delivery (DGSD), Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC), Durban, South Africa

    Benjamin J. Roberts

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  1. Valerie Møller
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Correspondence to Valerie Møller.

Appendix

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See Table 11.

Table 11 Classification of domains defining positive and negative ACSA anchors: frequency of mention
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Møller, V., Roberts, B.J. The Best and Worst Times of Life for South Africans: Evidence of Universal Reference Standards in Evaluations of Personal Well-Being Using Bernheim’s ACSA. Soc Indic Res 143, 1319–1347 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11205-018-2018-9

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