The Wellbeing Journal: Creative Activities to Inspire (Wellbeing Guides)

Product Information

Well-being is more than happiness and life satisfaction: a multidimensional analysis of 21 countries

Well-Being Journal - Happiness Initiative Well-Being Journal - Happiness Initiative

Hills & Argyle (2002) considered limitations of earlier happiness measurements when developing their Oxford Happiness Questionnaire (OHQ). The authors used the terms “well-being” and “subjective well-being” as synonyms for “happiness” when describing the OHQ. This instrument is a new version of the Oxford Happiness Inventory ( Argyle, 2001) and both scales were widely used in Oxford University for assessment of personal happiness and are shown to have satisfactory psychometric properties ( Hills & Argyle, 2002). The OHQ is a unidimensional scale that contains items tapping into positive and negative affect, life satisfaction and happy traits such as sense of control, physical fitness, positive cognition, mental alertness, self-esteem, cheerfulness, optimism, and empathy ( Diener, 1984; Hills & Argyle, 2002). In the specific instance of MPWB in relation to existing measures of well-being, there are several critical reasons to ensure a robust approach to measurement through systematic validation of psychometric properties. The first is that these measures are already part of the ESS, meaning they are being used to study a very large sample across a number of social challenges and not specifically a new measure for well-being. The ESS has a significant influence on policy discussions, which means the best approaches to utilizing the data are critical to present systematically, as we have attempted to do here. This approach goes beyond existing measures such as Gallup or the World Happiness Index to broadly cover psychological well-being, not individual features such as happiness or life satisfaction (though we reiterate: as we demonstrate in Fig. 7a and b, these individual measures can and should still covary broadly with any multidimensional measure of well-being, even if not useful for predicting all dimensions). While often referred to as ‘comprehensive’ measurement, this merely describes a broad range of dimensions, though more items for each dimension – and potentially more dimensions – would certainly be preferable in an ideal scenario. Diener E, Pressman S, Hunter J, Chase D. If, why, and when subjective well-being influences health, and future needed research. Appl Psychol Health Well Being. 2017;9(2):133–67.The Well-being Journal is a beautifully designed tool that brings together evidence-based practices from Positive Psychology to help you improve your well-being.

6 best wellness journals to help productivity and self-care

Carreira H, Williams R, Strongman H, Bhaskaran K. Identification of mental health and quality of life outcomes in primary care databases in the UK: a systematic review. BMJ Open. 2019;9(7):e029227.Diener E. New findings and future directions for subjective well-being research. Am Psychol. 2012;67(8):590.