Life is a most unpleasant thing, but to turn it wonderful is not that difficult. For this you need not win 200,000 roubles, be awarded the Order of the White Eagle, to marry a beauty, or to gain respect—all of these boons are perishable and eventually become a habit. To experience happiness without interruption, even in moments of grief and sorrow, one needs to be: (a) content with the present, and (b) rejoice that it “could have been much worse.”
A.P. Chekhov, Life is wonderful (1885).
Abstract
Data from the 1975 U.S. time use survey, Canadian time use surveys (GSS) conducted from 1986 to 2010, and experience sampling surveys (ESM) conducted in 1985 and 2003 at the University of Waterloo (Canada) are used to examine well-being effects of time use. Indicators of subjective well-being (SWB) under investigation include: (a) generalised enjoyment ratings of selected daily activities; (b) reporting of the single most enjoyed activity performed on the time diary day; (c) affect ratings of daily activities recorded in ESM surveys at the time of their occurrence; (d) correlations between time use and levels of respondents’ perceived happiness and life satisfaction, and (e) relationships between frequency of participation in different groups of daily activities and respondents’ cumulative affect ratings during a survey week (ESM 1985, 2003). An argument is made that attempts to delineate indices of SWB as multiples of activity enjoyment ratings and their duration encounter considerable measurement and conceptual difficulties. It is suggested that prolonged exposure to highly enjoyed daily activities does not always foretell higher levels of cumulative subjective well-being, which is associated with balanced use of time rather than increased participation in individual activities.
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Notes
The law of diminishing marginal utility formulated by Alfred Marshall reads: “The additional utility which a person derives from an increase of his stock of a commodity diminishes with every increase in the stock that he or she already has” economics-exposed.com/theory-or-consumer-behaviour-3/.
According to Schmidt (2009), “Many ESM studies involve composite measures in which multiple ESM items are used simultaneously to measure a single latent construct (e.g., intrinsic motivation, positive affect, anxiety). The internal consistency of composite measures, as indicated by Cronbach’s alpha coefficient, are consistently within acceptable range (70-90)” Additional information about analyses of ESM data can be found in Csikszentmihalyi & Larson, 1987; Alliger & Williams, 1993; Stone & Shiffman, 1992; Hektner, Csikszentmihalyi & Schmidt, 2002.
Per cent of single most enjoyed activities was calculated for respondents, who reported participation in a given activity on the diary day. For problems associated with the measurement of single most enjoyed activities see Michelson (2010).
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Acknowledgments
The 1985 and 2003 ESM surveys were supported by Grants from the Canadian Federal Department of Fitness and Amateur Sport and Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada and were directed by Jiri Zuzanek (principal investigator) and Roger Mannell. The author would like to thank Kimberly Fisher, Margo Hilbrecht, Steven Mock, Tania White and Natasha Graham for their advice.
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Zuzanek, J., Zuzanek, T. Of Happiness and of Despair, Is There a Measure? Time Use and Subjective Well-being. J Happiness Stud 16, 839–856 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10902-014-9536-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10902-014-9536-1