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METHODOLOGICAL CONSIDERATIONS IN THE MEASUREMENT OF SUBJECTIVE WELL-BEING
extent of acquiescence across countries in 17 cases, and country differences had an average effect size of 0.074. Greek respondents were particularly high on extreme responding, and Spanish and Italian respondents also scored consistently higher than those from France, Germany and the United Kingdom. Country differences in extreme responding were significant in 12 out of 18 cases, with an effect size of 0.071, described as “almost of medium size”. As the study also included measures of actual behaviour, the authors could be reasonably confident in attributing their results to response styles – in several tests, they failed to find a relationship between higher levels of scale endorsement and actual behaviour. In contrast to the extreme response styles described above, it has been suggested that Asian Confucian cultures are more likely to show a preference for more moderate response categories (Cummins and Lau, 2010; Lau, Cummins and McPherson, 2005; Lee, Jones, Mineyama and Zhang, 2002) – although once again there is rarely empirical data demonstrating that this leads to less accurate or valid data. Lee et al. (2002), for example, reported that although culture (Japanese/Chinese/USA) did affect response patterns on a “sense of coherence” measure, this did not attenuate the observed relationship between “sense of coherence” and health – thus implying that scale validity was not adversely affected. What did seem to matter for scale validity in this study, however, was the number of Likert response categories used – and here, there was an interaction with culture, such that 7-point scales showed stronger relationships with health among Japanese respondents, whereas 4- and 5-point scales showed stronger relationships with health among Chinese and American respondents. As the authors themselves conclude, “this is rather disturbing and warrants further investigation” (p. 305). Some researchers have also reported cultural differences in the extent to which socially desirable responding is likely. For example, Middleton and Jones (2000) found that small samples of undergraduate students from East Asian countries such as Hong Kong (China), Singapore, Thailand, Taiwan, Japan and China were more likely than North American students to report fewer socially undesirable traits and more socially desirable ones.
The evidence – subjective well-being Acquiescence and extreme responding have also been investigated on constructs related to subjective well-being among a limited number of cultural and linguistic groups. Looking across measures that included psychological distress and locus of control (both loosely related to the construct of eudaimonia or psychological well-being), Ross and Mirowsky (1984) reported that Mexican respondents were more likely to exhibit acquiescent response tendencies, when compared with both Mexican-Americans and non-Hispanic Whites living in El Paso. It has been hypothesised that certain cultures tend to use response scales differently, and that this could lie behind some of the subjective well-being differences observed between different countries with similar objective life circumstances. For example, Chen, Lee and Stevenson (1995, cited in Schimmack et al., 2002) suggested that low levels of life satisfaction in Japanese cultures may reflect a “modesty bias”. Tendencies either towards more extreme or more moderate responding could affect either the overall distribution of scores or the mean level of responses. Minkov (2009) explored differences among cultures in the extent to which strong and polarised (i.e. very good versus very bad) judgements tend to be reported across 17 different questions about
OECD GUIDELINES ON MEASURING SUBJECTIVE WELL-BEING © OECD 2013
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