Sridhar
Martha C. Nussbaum
Who is the happy warrior? Philosophy, happiness research, and public policy
International Review of Economics
Published online: 23 October 2012
Absolutely fascinating and thought-provoking contribution which rigourously underpins (?undermines) the whole SWB industry. The link to the pdf file wouldn't open on my machine but this html one does.
http://www.springerlink.com/content/m426713510376t24/fulltext.html
Many thanks for pointing this article out. At the risk of duplicating my previous posts, it's easier for me to copy my response to Prof Nussbaum:
Dear Professor Nussbaum
I have just read your thought-provoking article:
Martha C. Nussbaum
Who is the happy warrior? Philosophy, happiness research, and public policy
International Review of Economics
Published online: 23 October 2012
http://www.springerlink.com/content/m426713510376t24/fulltext.html
I spent my entire career from 1965 as a survey researcher, and in the early 1970s was responsible, with the late Dr Mark Abrams, for some important development work on survey-based subjective social indicators.
I have now been retired for 20 years, but on reading your article, I was immediately tempted to operationalise your concepts by drafting a survey instrument suitable for general population use. Given the deeply personal reflection necessary, this would be difficult via face-to-face interview, but possibly quite amenable to carefully designed self-completion (? on-line, computerised ?) questionnaires. Perhaps one day someone will run a field test of such an instrument with respondents simultaneously coupled up to monitors of endorphin and adrenalin levels!
Under the general rubric of Quality of Life, this work was carried out in Britain (at the then Social Science Research Council Survey Unit) in close collaboration with the late Angus Campbell, then Director of the Institute of Social Research, Ann Arbor, Michigan. [See: Campbell and Converse, The Human Meaning of Social Change (Russell Sage Foundation, 1972) and Campbell, Converse and Rodgers, The Quality of American Life (Russell Sage Foundation, 1975)]. Norman Bradburn (NORC) sat in on some of our early design meetings and we replicated the Affect Balance Scale from The Structure of Psychological Well-being (Aldine, 1969).
There is no book for the British work as SSRC closed the Survey Unit in 1976, but you can access several (not easily available, if at all) reports and papers on the Publications on the Quality of Life in Britain surveys page on my website, which contains a wealth of material from our surveys, including the original data. Perhaps the most comprehensive introductory coverage is in my 1976 article Subjective measures of quality of life in Britain 1971 to 1975: Some developments and trends. On reflection, some of your ideas are implicit, if not explicit, in our own work: you can see abstracts of coverage, user-manuals, facsimile questionnaires and show-card formats (See for instance ISR 1973 and SSRC 1973 and 1975 scales plus commentary) from two pilot surveys and two national surveys on the Subjective Social Indicators page.
There are number of studies relating life events to subjective indicators (particularly measures of stress) but as far as I know the only study with simultaneous clinical corroboration is the Health Opinion Survey run by Allister Macmillan (See: Monograph Supplement 7, Psychological Reports 1957, 3, 325-339, Southern Universities Press). The UK Office of National Satistics (ONS) recently ran a major consultation exercise on measures of subjective well-being (SWB) to be used in government surveys and there's a series of National Wellbeing discussions on StatsUserNet.
Some such measures have already been used in major government surveys and data are now available for secondary analysis. There's a particularly interesting article The Warwick-Edinburgh Mental Well-being Scale (WEMWBS): development and UK validation which lists that and other scales used in the measurement of mental health. This scale has recently been used in Scotland (details on Measuring Mental Well-being) To date I have not found a single site listing the contents of all the different scales together with their statistical properties, and certainly none with any operational or critical assessments. Part of the problem is that academics and others tend not (or do not have time) to read outside their own narrow specialisms, so there is overlapping of work in mental health, clinical and social psychology, sociology, political science, econometrics etc which never seems to be compared or co-ordinated. Some co-ordination in the area of public health is now represented by the North West Public Health Authority and the Centre for Public Health based at Liverpool John Moores University.
Finally, if you have not already come across them, have a look at:
Charles F Turner and Elizabeth Martin [Eds]
Surveys of Subjective Phenomena: Summary Report
National Academy Press, Washington DC 1981
Charles F Turner and Elizabeth Martin [Eds]
Surveying Subjective Phenomena (vols 1 and 2)
Russell Sage Foundation, 1984
They are reports by:
Panel on Survey Measurement of Subjective Phenomena
Committee on National Statistics
Assembly of Behavioral and Social Sciences
National Research Council
I think that's probably enough for one day. Just off to enjoy a nice lunch. "Erst kommt die Essen, den kommt die Moralität" as someone once said.
Sincerely
John F Hall (Mr)
Email: johnfhall@orange.fr
Website: www.surveyresearch.weebly.com
Show Original Message
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Original Message:
Sent: 27-10-2012 11:01
From: Sridhar Venkatapuram
Subject: Martha Nussbaum article on subjective wellbeing and public policy
Hello. An article by Martha Nussbaum on subjective wellbeing and public policy has recently been published in the International Review of Economics. While it is not related directly to measurement, given that the ONS often refers to Sen and her work on wellbeing and quality of life, I am providing the link below.
It's a very substantive article addressing directly Kahneman and Seligman as well as Dolan and White's criticisms of objective wellbeing.
I believe it is open access.
best regards,
Sridhar
http://www.springerlink.com/content/m426713510376t24/