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Measuring and Monitoring Subjective Well-Being - The German Experience Heinz-Herbert Noll GESIS – Leibniz Institute fo

Measuring and Monitoring Subjective Well-Being - The German Experience Heinz-Herbert Noll GESIS – Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences Social Indicators Research Centre (ZSi) Mannheim, Germany www.gesis.org/social-indicators

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Measuring and Monitoring Subjective Well-Being - The German Experience Heinz-Herbert Noll GESIS – Leibniz Institute fo

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  1. Measuring and Monitoring Subjective Well-Being - The German Experience Heinz-Herbert Noll GESIS – Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences Social Indicators Research Centre (ZSi) Mannheim, Germany www.gesis.org/social-indicators Satellite Meeting - Measuring Subjective Well-Being: An Opportunity for National Statistical Offices? Florence, July 23-24

  2. Situation in Germany: Strong reluctance of German statistical office (destatis) to collect “subjective information”, e.g. data on Subjective Well-Being; exceptions as yet almost completely restricted to European surveys like, e.g. EU-SILC  partly due to „division of labour“ in collection and supply of data Well developed science based data infrastructure beyond official statistics Long tradition of measuring, monitoring & reporting subjective well- being

  3. Science Driven Survey-Data Infrastructure – Two Examples • German Welfare Survey • - Emerged from large scale project on social Indicators during the 1970s • - Strong focus on the measurement of subjective well-being, • - Large number of different SWB – measures (incl. Ill-Being) • - Survey rounds in 1978, 1980, 1984, 1988, 1990 (East Germany), 1993, 1998 • More Information: http://www.gesis.org/en/services/data/survey-data/welfare-survey/ • German Socio-Economic Household Panel Study (SOEP) • Longitudinal Survey (Panel) • First round in 1984 • Since then every year • East Germany included in 1990 • Large sample (2006: ca. 11.000 households with more than 20.000 respondents) • Complex sample design, includes non-German population • Multitude of SWB-measures, among them life satisfaction, several domain satisfactions - Personal interviews with each household member 16 years + More Information:http://www.diw.de/english/soep/29012.html

  4. Several other important national Survey – Programmes, e.g.  German General Social Survey (ALLBUS)  German Ageing Survey  SWB as one of the key topics International Survey – Programmes (see Noll 2008), eg.  European Social Survey  European Quality of Life Survey  International Social Survey Programme  World Value Survey / European Values Study

  5. Database: SOEP; calculations by Social Indicators Research Centre

  6. Database: SOEP; calculations by Social Indicators Research Centre

  7. Long Tradition in Reporting on SWB as Part of General Social Reporting  Datenreport = Most Important and Popular Comprehensive German Social Report  Since 2nd edition in 1985 joint venture of official statistics (destatis) and academic social research (since 1989: GESIS, WZB)  Academic part titled „Living Conditions and Subjective Well-Being“; (English Version of „Datenreport 1985“ published in Social Indicators Research, Vol. 19, no 1, 1987)

  8.  Focus on Quality of Life in Terms of Objective Living Conditions and Subjective Well-Being (as well as their interrelations)  ‚Well-Being‘ = combination of good living conditions and high level of SWB  goal for policy making

  9. Example from Datenreport 1985: „Life satisfaction: past, present, future“

  10. Example Datenreport 1985: „Importance of life domains and con-cerns for well-being and satisfaction“   

  11.  Latest Edition (12th) of Datenreport = 2008 Available for Download at: www.gesis.org/datenreport/

  12. Source: Datenreport 2008, Ch.15.1: „Satisfaction in Life Domains“

  13. Source: Datenreport 2008, Ch.15.1: „Satisfaction in Life Domains“

  14. Source: Datenreport 2008, Ch.15.1: „Satisfaction in Life Domains“

  15. Conclusions from German Experience: •  Official Statistics not needed as basic provider of SWB - data; there are plenty of good quality data on various aspect of SWB since many years •  Data provided by statistical offices are not necessarily of better quality than data from other sources • Quality of official survey data may suffer from the same kind of problems as non- official survey data, e.g. • - biased samples / non-response (if not compulsory) • - inappropriate question wordings / formats • - inadequate answering scales • - problems of comparability or equivalence in international surveys •  Major advantage of official surveys are large sample sizes, allowing detailed analysis for small population subgroups, regions etc •  Measures of SWB (not only life satisfaction) should though be included into official surveys – e.g. like HBS, LFS, EU-SILC – in order to considerably enrich these surveys and to enhance their analytical potential in various ways

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