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Culture and Well-Being: A Research Agenda Designed to Improve Cross-Cultural Research Involving the Life Satisfaction Construct

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Metrics of Subjective Well-Being: Limits and Improvements

Part of the book series: Happiness Studies Book Series ((HAPS))

Abstract

The goal of this chapter was to develop a research agenda to help quality-of-life researchers devise improved methods to measure life satisfaction in large-scale national surveys and making cross-country comparisons. Specifically, we identified six cultural dimensions that have a direct bearing on the measurement of life satisfaction. These are (1) identity (individualism vs. collectivism culture), (2) authority (high- vs. low-power distance culture), (3) competition (femininity vs. masculinity), (4) risk (high- vs. low-uncertainty avoidance), (5) time span (long-term orientation vs. short-term orientation), and (6) status (achievement vs. ascription). Theory and evidence suggest that these cultural factors tend to bias the measurement of life satisfaction in large-scale national and international surveys. As such, we developed a set of theoretical propositions to expound and explicate the cultural bias in the measurement of life satisfaction and offered a set of methodological remedies.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Yonsei University, Seoul, Korea

    Dong-** Lee

  2. Duksung Women’s University, Seoul, Korea

    Grace B. Yu

  3. Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, Blacksburg, USA

    Joseph Sirgy

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  1. Dong-** Lee
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  2. Grace B. Yu
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Correspondence to Dong-** Lee .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Happiness Studies, Erasmus University Rotterdam Happiness Studies, Rotterdam, The Netherlands

    Gaël Brulé

  2. Dipartimento di Scienze Statistiche, Università di Roma "La Sapienza" , Roma, Italy

    Filomena Maggino

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Lee, DJ., Yu, G.B., Sirgy, J. (2017). Culture and Well-Being: A Research Agenda Designed to Improve Cross-Cultural Research Involving the Life Satisfaction Construct. In: Brulé, G., Maggino, F. (eds) Metrics of Subjective Well-Being: Limits and Improvements. Happiness Studies Book Series. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-61810-4_10

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-61810-4_10

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