The Subjective Well-Being Module of the American Time Use Survey: Assessment for Its Continuation

Excerpt

Research on subjective or self-reported well-being (SWB) has been ongoing for several decades, with the past few years seeing an increased interest by some countries in using SWB measures to evaluate government policies and provide a broader assessment of the health of a society than is provided by such standard economic measures as Gross Domestic Product (see, for example, Stiglitz, Sen, and Fitoussi, 2009). The National Institute on Aging and the United Kingdom Economic and Social Research Council asked a panel of the National Research Council’s Committee on National Statistics to review the current state of research knowledge and evaluate methods for measuring self-reported well-being and to offer guidance about adopting SWB measures in official population surveys (see Box 1-1 for the full charge to the panel). NIA also asked the panel to prepare an interim report on the usefulness of the Subjective Well-Being module of the American Time Use Survey (ATUS), with a view as to the utility of continuing the module in 2013.