Developing a New Measurement on Subjective Well-Being Essay

Financial Status of an Individual

Subjective well-being of an individual is frequently related to the financial status of an individual but more often, it includes a broader elementary view that indicate how an individual views certain conditions. This research stipulates how an explanatory research used different variables, which will help determine a useful well-being index.

Is your time best spent reading someone else’s essay? Get a 100% original essay FROM A CERTIFIED WRITER!

Order now

For this research, the intentions were to come up with a new measurement on subjective-well-being. The method of measurement is built on the work of Churchill (1979) and Hinkin(1995) on the method of scale development and analysis . The method involves a 7-step process which involves developing a single scale with a number of items. There are a number of measures used but the commonly used mesure which was considerable to me was the likert scale used in survey questionnaires to that utilize an interval level of measurement.(cook et al .1981; Schmitt and kilimoski,(1991)

Likert Scale Level of Measurement

Likert measurement scale is named after Dr. Rensis Likert , who was a sociologist at the university Michigan who developed the technique. His aim was to develop a means of measuring psychological attitudes in a scientific way.

Developing a new measurement on subjective well-being of an individual is vital because it helps researchers to determine the psychosocial situations that might be leading to real psychological problems. As such, the primary research in this study attempts to develop social and work conditions might be possible factors that lead to the development of psychosocial problems. In particular, the research will tilt on the social and work factors that lead to the development of health.

Attempts to develop a multiple level scale is seen in the medieval period by the work of bass and his team mates. (Bass,1985 ;Bass and Avolio 1994) during their attempts to measure the transformational leadership construct. In the recent years, it is envisaged that there has been an increase in the research on subjective well-being (Diener (1984). Subjective well-being in the literature is related to a life satisfaction process, which requires a cognitive judgmental process. Shin and Johnson (1978) envisage life satisfaction as something, which is global assessment of a person’s quality of life according to his chosen criteria. It therefore means the psychological satisfaction of different persons is relative due to the fact each has set their own standards to determine whether they are happy or not. I concentrated on the satisfaction with life construct , the satisfaction with life construct has ben used profoundly as a measure of the life satisfaction component of subjective well being .(Pavot,W,and Diener,E(2008) .the scores related with satisfaction with life scale have shown to correlate with measures of mental health , in the area of health psychology.

The Satisfaction With Life Scale

The satisfaction with life scale uses 7-point likert response scale. The ranging of scores is usually between 5-35 ,with the score of 20 representing a neutral point on the scale. Scores between 5-9 indicate that the respondent is extremely dissatisfied with his or her life while scores which range 31- 35 indicate that respondents are extremely satisfied .The coefficient alpha for the scale ranges from .79 to.89 according to (Pavot,W& Diener , E (2008) The satisfaction with life scale and the emerging construct of life satisfaction.

The satisfaction with life scale was developed to assess the level of satisfaction with respondents life as a whole .(Pavot ,W.G &Diener,E (1993) report that the scale doesn’t asses satisfaction with life domains such as health or finance but it allows subjects to integrate and weigh these domains as they wish.

The logic behind developing my new scale was because in questioners given to respondents you may find some biased with their answers. Participants may avoid extreme response categories, others may agree with some statements as placed in the order to please the experimenter .The other reason is since many people would want to portray themselves in a more socially favorable light rather than being honest they would tend to lie.

Method

Participants were recruited via internet through Qualtrics,a private online survey company offering college-wide platform for academic research was contracted. A total170 participants from UK were recruited for a subjective wellbeing assessment. For the purpose of this research, all participant baseline responses were used. The mean age of participants was 31 (SD= 5).roughly 55% of the sample was female. All human subject’ procedure were approved by the supervisor ‘

Pilot Study Materials

Pilot study was designed for producing and improving the reliability and internal validity of the questionnaire. The initial questionnaire consisted of 24 questions, included 9 of the reverse- scored items. One example of the positively- worded items was: “most days I feel a sense of accomplishment,” the 5-point rating scale was from 1 for strongly Disagree to 5 for Strongly agree: and the negative –worded items exampled as;”I struggle to make new relationships. “Total of 20 psychology undergraduates who attended were mean age of 28 (SD=5) the number of female participants were 60% participate this pilot study .After collecting the data and before analyzing the data, the negatively –worded items were reversely coded that ensured the consistence with positevley- worded items in terms of what an “agree” or “disagree” imply. By doing ,just simply simply recorded 1 of this item to 5,2 to 4,4,4 to 2 ,5 to 1 and 3 to 3as a neutal point in this 5-point scale.

By transforming the high scores on the negatively –worded items to become low scores, which meaning that indicating low levels of attribute being measured.

the initial SPSS analysis showed thatb the Cronbanch’s alpha greatly valued as .905 , but the q11,q13,q22 and q24 in item- total correlations scored bellow .20.after 4 times of rewording and removing the 4 items ,finally the score of Cronbach’s alpha increased as .937.so the 20 –item questionnaire was complete and succeed.

Two valid measures were used: one was Satisfaction with Life Scale (Diener,Emmons,Larsen&Griffin,1985),which consisted of five statements that exampled as “I am satisfied with my life.”and rated at 7-point scale:1 for Strongly disagree; 2 for Disagree;3 for Slightly disagree 4 for neither agree nor agree ;5 for slightly agree;6 for agree and 7 for strongly agree. Another one was a shortened Social Desirability Scale (Crowne & Marlowe,1964) included 8 items with a 3 –point scale for instance, “Have there been occasions when you took advantage of someone ?”,three options were displayed as: “YES ,Not Sure and No.”

Results and Reliability Analysis

Reliability analysis was conducted in a test administration to determine which items could be retained and which needed to be discarded.

In the process of scale development there is need to prevent wastage of substantial time and effort in the collection of large data only to find that an important measure has flawed. It helps in the support of construct validity .one of the best method that I used was categorizing items based on their similarity to construct definitions.

Internal consistency reliability was used by having a repletion of measuring the items.internal consistency helps identify to the extent at which all of the items in a scale measure the different aspects of the same attributes. Cronbach’s alpha was used to ascertain the reliability of the test,with questions which had more than two possible responses which in this case there were 5-point . The cronbach’s alpha ranges form r= 0 to 1,with r=0.7or greater is considered sufficiently reliable which in this case was r=0.905.

The items total correlation were run to check if any item in the set of tests was consistent with the average behavior of the others. In short each teat was run as an average of other scores to see if there was any variance and each item should be required to correlate .correlation value that is less than 0.2 or 0.3 indicates that the items do not correlate very well with the scale overall and should be droppep. When the correlation values of items below 0.2 were deleted the average cronbach’s alpha was 0.9 which indicated the items were now correlating well with the scale.Cronbach’s alpaha of 0.8 is considered to be sufficiently reliable in this case. The different item descriptive were therefore useful in determining the social wellness of individuals with the uniform correlation, which displayed among all of them.

In appendix B2 the cronbach’s alpha was 0.832 and based on standardized items it happened to be 0.834 which was helped to ascertain the reliability of the test which was actually greater than 0.7 .

In appendix B 4 the corrected item correlations were all above 0.2 which indicated they all correlated well with the scale .similarly the cronbach’s alpha were all above 0.7 giving a clear indication that they were also reliable.

The items on appendix E and F had correlations that indicated that the items all converged on the same construct .Pearson correlation has a value between + 1 and _1 in which +1 indicates a total positive correlation while _1 indicates a total negative correlation .The correlations were all above 0 which gave a positive correlation feedback.

Exploratory Data Analysis

A common factoring method is formidable since analysis requires a common count. The objective of this analysis is to determine items that represent the content domain of the given construct. (Ford et all,1986 ) stipulates that a useful heuristic might be an appropriate loading of more than .40 criterion. The exploratory is useful in assessing the extent to which a set of item assesses the particular content, but it cannot quantify its goodness.

Exploratory factor helps in detecting the constructs, which means factors that underlie a dataset based on the correlations between variables, which in this case were questioners.(field 2009 ;Tabachnik & Fidell,2001) factors which explain the highest proportion of variance the variables share are expected to represent the underlying construct .

Appendix B3 contains the highest level of variance, which is 30.825% variance and upon rotation the variance changes to 17.970% .the number of items were 20 in the factor determination but only the first factor in the appendix indicated a high number of variance. Which means being happy with life was more determinant factor in Social well-being of different people, This therefore indicates there was only one factor, this emerged out of considering 6items .The variance in percentage is 30 % in the initial eigenvalue and on rotation the variance is approximately 17%. .the second variance was 7% but on rotation gave a 12% variance .the third variance also showed 7% variance with a rotation 10%.

The correlation of the social well being was .451,.383,.539 which showed a good level of internal consistency for the scale.

Confirmatory factor analysis

Confirmatory factor analysis is used to give specifications and distinctions among interests. Harvey recommends that confirmatory data analysis should be conducted by using item variance matrix (Harvey et al. 1985)

All these analysis were conducted, inclusive of an internal consistency assessment. The most used measure on consistency assessment is cronbach alpha, which informs how items measure the same construct (price and Muller, 1986). After the exploratory and confirmatory analysis were conducted, the bad items deleted, the internal consistency of the items was conducted. (carmines and Zella).Report that addition of more items makes less impact on the progressive and may actually reduce reliability of scale .

Personality Indicators

The given analysis helped in the creation of scale, which can help provide critical information on people and enhance the future of hospitality research.

The correlation with personality indicators of social well-being suggest that the scale can be useful in clinical settings

The results were able to indicate variance in the social happiness among people. The scale indicated that there were possibility of a happy social life and can be used in economic factors determine measures such as salary payment.

Further scale development should develop further satisfaction ways by researching factors, which cause biasness in giving out true data through questionnaires.

Future reach on scale development should have a discriminant validity of the scale, and there should be exploration on what brings life satisfaction and how this affects various individuals.

References

Arnold, A., Lucier-Greer, M., Mancini, J., Ford, J., & Wickrama, K. (2017). How Family Structures and Processes Interrelate. Journal Of Family Issues, 38(6), 858-879. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0192513x15616849

Berjot, S., Altintas, E., Lesage, F., & Grebot, E. (2013). The Impact of Work Stressors on Identity Threats and Perceived Stress. SAGE Open, 3(3), 215824401350529. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/2158244013505292

Borgen, F., & Betz, N. (2008). Career Self-Efficacy and Personality: Linking Career Confidence and the Healthy Personality. Journal Of Career Assessment, 16(1), 22-43. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1069072707305770

Ceida, B., McKenney, C., & Burley, H. (2001). The Career Lines of Chief Academic Officers in Public Community Colleges. Community College Review, 28(4), 31-46. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/009155210102800402

Christian, J., & Kennedy, L. (2011). Secondary narratives in the aftermath of crime: Defining family members' relationships with prisoners. Punishment & Society, 13(4), 379-402. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1462474511414781

Cooper, C. L., Quick, J. C., & Schabracq, M. (2009). International handbook of work and health psychology. Chichester, UK: Wiley-Blackwell.

Handy, J., & Davy, D. (2007). Gendered ageism: Older women's experiences of employment agency practices. Asia Pacific Journal Of Human Resources, 45(1), 85-99. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1038411107073606

Handy, J., & Davy, D. (2007). Gendered ageism: Older women's experiences of employment agency practices. Asia Pacific Journal Of Human Resources, 45(1), 85-99. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1038411107073606

Hu, S., Hood, M., & Creed, P. (2016). Career Goal Importance as a Moderator in the Relationship Between Career Feedback and Career-Related Stress. Journal Of Career Development. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0894845316667847

Lee, Y., Kwon, K., Kim, W., & Cho, D. (2016). Work Engagement and Career. Human Resource Development Review, 15(1), 29-54. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1534484316628356

Lee, Y., Kwon, K., Kim, W., & Cho, D. (2016). Work Engagement and Career. Human Resource Development Review, 15(1), 29-54. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1534484316628356

Martin, D., & Yurkovich, E. (2014). “Close-Knit” Defines a Healthy Native American Indian Family. Journal Of Family Nursing, 20(1), 51-72. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1074840713508604

Monteith, B., & Ford-Gilboe, M. (2002). The Relationships among Mother's Resilience, Family Health Work, and Mother's Health-Promoting Lifestyle Practices in Families with Preschool Children. Journal Of Family Nursing, 8(4), 383-407. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/107484002237514

Nosek, B., Graham, J., Lindner, N., Kesebir, S., Hawkins, C., & Hahn, C. et al. (2010). Cumulative and Career-Stage Citation Impact of Social-Personality Psychology Programs and Their Members. Personality And Social Psychology Bulletin, 36(10), 1283-1300. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0146167210378111

Nosek, B., Graham, J., Lindner, N., Kesebir, S., Hawkins, C., & Hahn, C. et al. (2010). Cumulative and Career-Stage Citation Impact of Social-Personality Psychology Programs and Their Members. Personality And Social Psychology Bulletin, 36(10), 1283-1300. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0146167210378111

Oades, L. G., Steger, M. F., & Fave, A. D. (2016). The Wiley Blackwell handbook of the psychology of positivity and strengths-based approaches at work. Hoboken : Wiley, 2016.

Tabachnik,B.G,& Fidell,L.S (2001) Using Multivariate statistics (4th edithion) .Pearson :Needham heights ,MA

Valk, R., van Engen, M., & van der Velde, M. (2014). International Careers and Career Success of Indian Women in Science and Technology: The Importance of Career Capital and Organizational Capital. South Asian Journal Of Human Resources Management, 1(2), 175-205. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/2322093714549107

Wang, N., Jome, L., Haase, R., & Bruch, M. (2006). The Role of Personality and Career Decision-Making Self-Efficacy in the Career Choice Commitment of College Students. Journal Of Career Assessment, 14(3), 312-332. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1069072706286474