Exploring constructs of well-being, happiness and quality of life

Exploring constructs of well-being, happiness and quality of life Oleg N. Medvedev1 and C. Erik Landhuis2 1 2 School of Medicine, University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand School of Social Sciences and Public Policy, Auckland University of Technology, Auckland, New Zealand ABSTRACT Submitted 10 February 2018 Accepted 15 May 2018 Published 1 June 2018 Background: Existing definitions of happiness, subjective well-being, and quality of life suggest conceptual overlap between these constructs. This study explored the relationship between these well-being constructs by applying widely used measures with satisfactory psychometric properties. Materials and Methods: University students (n = 180) completed widely used wellbeing measures including the Oxford Happiness Questionnaire (OHQ), the World Health Organization Quality of Life Questionnaire, the Satisfaction with Life Scale, and the Positive and Negative Affect Scale. We analyzed the data using correlation, regression, and exploratory factor analysis. Results: All included well-being measures demonstrated high loadings on the global well-being construct that explains about 80% of the variance in the OHQ, the psychological domain of Quality of Life and subjective well-being. The results show high positive correlations between happiness, psychological and health domains of quality of life, life satisfaction, and positive affect. Social and environmental domains of quality of life were poor predictors of happiness and subjective well-being after controlling for psychological quality of life. Conclusion: Together, these data provide support for a global well-being dimension and interchangeable use of terms happiness, subjective well-being, and psychological quality of life with the current sample and measures. Further investigation with larger heterogeneous samples and other well-being measures is warranted. Corresponding author Oleg N. Medvedev, Subjects Global Health, Psychiatry and Psychology, Statistics Keywords Quality of life, Well-being, Happiness, Measurement, Life satisfaction Academic editor Fulvio D’Acquisto INTRODUCTION Additional Information and Declarations can be found on page 12 DOI 10.7717/peerj.4903 Copyright 2018 Medvedev and Landhuis Distributed under Creative Commons CC-BY 4.0 The existing definitions of happiness, subjective well-being, and health related quality of life and the main components assigned to these constructs in the research literature (see Table 1) suggest conceptual overlap between these dimensions (Camfield & Skevington, 2008). Quality of life was defined in the cross-cultural project of the World Health Organization (WHO) as: An individual’s perception of their position in life, in the context of the culture and value systems in which they live, and in relation to their goals, expectations, standards, and concerns. It is a broad ranging concept, affected in a complex way by How to cite this article Medvedev and Landhuis (2018), Exploring constructs of well-being, happiness and quality of life. PeerJ 6:e4903; DOI 10.7717/peerj.4903 the person’s physical health, psychological state, level of independence, social relationships and their relationships to salient features of their environment. (WHOQOL Group, 1995, p. 1404) The new reconceptualization of subjective well-being assumed to be synonymous of happiness by Diener (2006, p. 400) as: “An umbrella term for different valuations that people make regarding their lives, the events happening to them, their bodies and minds, and the circumstances in which they live” resulted in greater theoretical convergence between these constructs. This raises an issue as to the point in which conceptual overlap invites redundancy, and whether one or the other of the terms is now surplus to requirements. Historically, humans strived to achieve happiness and considered it the most important goal in life (Compton, 2005). Cross-cultural research provide supporting evidence for primacy of happiness compared to other individual values such as physical health, wealth or love (Kim-Prieto et al., 2005; Skevington, MacArthur & Somerset, 1997). Essentially, other human goals are valued because they are believed to give rise to happiness (Csikszentmihaliy, 1992). Initially psychology was dealing with mental health issues affecting physical and social functioning of an individual (Andrews & McKennell, 1980; Beck, 1991, 1993). Happiness, well-being, and quality of life have only attracted increased interest of psychologists by the end of the 20th century resulting in growing research in this area (Diener, 1984; WHOQOL Group, 1998a, 1998b). Happiness and well-being research became increasingly important in the economics’ context (Kristoffersen, 2010), and well-being data are widely used along with economic indicators by economists (Kahneman & Krueger, 2006). Currently, there is no agreement between researchers in defining happiness and its related constructs (Diener, 2006; Diener et al., 2010; Rojas & Veenhoven, 2013; Kern et al., 2014; Shin & Johnson, 1978). In the literature happiness is often called subjective wellbeing (Diener, 2006; Hills & Argyle, 2002), emotional well-being, positive affect (Brandburn, 1969; Fordyce, 1988), and quality of life (Diener, 2000; Ratzlaff et al., 2000; Shin & Johnson, 1978), which suggests that the meanings of happiness may depend on the context (Diener, 2006; Carlquist et al., 2016). Elsewhere, subjective happiness was defined as “a global evaluation of life satisfaction” (Diener, 2006, p. 400). In the same way, subjective well-being was defined as “evaluations of life quality” (Andrews & McKennell, 1980, p. 131). These definitions indicate close relationship between the constructs of happiness, subjective well-being, quality of life, and life satisfaction. More recently subjective well-being was proposed as more appropriate “Big One” including the relevant aspects of global well-being (Diener, 2006; Kashdan, Biswas-Diener & King, 2008). Happiness can be described by bottom-up and top-down processes (Andrews & McKennell, 1980; Diener, 1984). The bottom-up approach implies that happiness depends on aggregated positive and negative feelings (Diener, 1984). However, evidence suggests that positive affect is not a counterpart of negative affect and the correlation between them is merely moderate (Argyle, 2001; Tellegen et al., 1988). Alternatively, top-down approaches explain happiness is a result of subjective evaluations of individual’s life Medvedev and Landhuis (2018), PeerJ, DOI 10.7717/peerj.4903 2/16 Table 1 Components of happiness related constructs based on the research literature. Components: Affective Cognitive Physical Constructs Positive affect Negative affect Life satisfaction Happy traits Positive functioning Happiness Hills & Argyle (2002) Hills & Argyle (2002) Hills & Argyle (2002) Hills & Argyle (2002) Joseph & Lewis (1998) Hills & Argyle (2002) Diener (1984) Diener (1984) Dien (...truncated)