ABSTRACT. In this talk we will review the evidence on a number of empirical questions, including: how important is work for wellbeing? What are the key drivers of workplace wellbeing? Does workplace wellbeing matter for productivity and firm performance? Answers rely on a number of data sources including a major new partnership with job search engine Indeed that has enabled the crowdsourcing of over 17 million employee wellbeing surveys to date.

ABSTRACT. With the aging population, declining birthrate, late marriage, singleness, and increasing numbers of foreign spouses and new immigrants, the structure, development, and functions of Taiwanese families have undergone rapid changes. The purpose of this study is to understand how the current fast-changing socio-cultural ecological transition affects the value for childbearing, and to explore the impact of value for childbearing on marital quality. Three hundred and fifty Taiwanese married couples filled out a questionnaire which included the scales of value for childbearing, family norms about patrilineal and traditional gender roles, and two dimensions of marital quality: satisfaction and regret. Statistic methods as Confirmatory factor analysis, Latent Class Analysis, t-test, and HLMs were used. The results of this study showed that (1) the factors in couples’ value for childbearing could be categorized as ‘meaning of childbearing,’ ‘offspring reproduction,’ ‘domestic bliss,’ ‘care by child when aging,’ ‘role identification,’ ‘negative impact on life,’ ‘economic burden,’ and ‘parenting pressure’. (2) Husbands reported higher agreement on patrilineal and traditional gender roles, lower score on parenting pressure, and better marital quality than did wives. (3) Those who reported higher agreement on patrilineal and traditional gender roles were more emphasizing the meaning of childbearing, offspring reproduction, domestic bliss, care by child when aging, and role identification. (4) The patterns of couples’ value for childbearing could be classified as ‘emphasis on the meaning of childbearing (17.14%),’ ‘considered childbearing as stressor (44.18%)’ and ‘both benefits and damages (37.89%)’. (5) The ‘considered childbearing as stressor’ couples reported the worse marital quality than the ‘emphasis on the meaning of childbearing’ couples, and the ‘both benefits and damages’ couples reported the higher marital regret than the ‘emphasis on the meaning of childbearing’ couples. These results highlighted the unique meaning of value for childbearing and traditional family norm in contemporary Taiwan couples.

ABSTRACT. Personal identity, body perceptions, and lifestyles have been researched and documented for decades. However, several athlete versus non-athlete lifestyles and characteristics have yet to be documented. Low life satisfaction is extremely common on college campuses today. With clinical depression (resulting from low life satisfaction) being the leading mental illness among college students. The current study uses a self-report questionnaire to examine how college students’ life satisfaction is impacted by athlete self-identification, body appreciation, and exercise frequency. From this research, implications, such as exercise interventions can be implemented to improve life satisfaction and mental health. The following research used bivariate correlations and a multiple regression analysis to examine these variables. Body appreciation was found to be significantly correlated with life satisfaction. Meanwhile, body appreciation and life satisfaction were individually associated with athlete self-identification.

ABSTRACT. The degree of physical activity benefits varies significantly depending on the level of physical activity of the individual, age groups, population types, as well as the intensity of various physical activities. The aim of this study was to evaluate the influence of physical activity level on some parameters of physical health. Material and methods: Total of 2000 residents of Armenia (829 men and 1171 women, average age: 34.2±12.6 (M±SD) were involved in the study. We applied the Multiscan BS_OXI instrument to measure the indicators of physical health. The assessment of the level of physical activity was carried out in accordance with the monitoring programs used in the field of fitness testing, where low physical activity: office activity, average physical activity: walking for 20 minutes/day, sports 1-2 hours a week, and high physical activity: sports 2-4 hours a week. Statistical analysis was carried out using the SPSS software package. Results: According to the results, the average score of stress resistance is 60.69±10.1, the average score of endothelium is 80.65±9.5, the average score of body composition is 79.59±10.96, the average score of spine condition is 65.60±12, 1 and the average score of wellness 83.73±5.6. As a result of the research, it was found that the average level of endothelial and wellness indicators were within the norm, the body composition indicator was slightly below normal, and the stress resistance indicator was within the norm and violations, which justifies the need to develop and implement wellness programs aimed at improving body composition and stress resistance of the population. In the second stage of the study the participants were divided into three groups according to their physical activity level.13.75% of the total sample had a high, 56.5%–moderate and 29.75%-low level of physical activity. In the group of high physical activity the highest score was body composition (91.19±6.6) and the lowest score was stress resistance (60.09±10.6). In the moderate physical activity group the highest score was wellness (84.31±5.7) and the lowest was stress resistance (60.25±10.06). In the low physical activity group the highest score was wellness (81.95±5.5) and the lowest was stress resistance. Conclusion: Thus, the average indicators of physical health parameters are different in different physical activity level groups, but the stress resistance was the lowest in all three groups. We consider it necessary to develop and implement appropriate programs of physical activity in the Armenian population, which will be aimed at increasing the stress resistance index. The study was financially supported by the Science Committee of the Ministry of Education and Science of the Republic of Armenia within the framework of the scientific project 21T-3B040.

ABSTRACT. The aim of the study is the investigation the peculiarities of ENT disease’s impact on the quality of life of school-age children with the help of the PedsQL ™ 4.0questionnaire. Material and methods of the research School-age children and their parents completed the Pads QL™ 4.0 questionnaire. The questionnaire (J. Verne, 2010) includes 23 questions distributed as follows:" Physical function", "Emotional function", "Social function", "Role function", and "Psychosocial function". The following integral indicators were obtained: the score of the "physical" component of Quoll (PN), the score of the psychosocial function of Quoll (SP), and the total score of Quoll. According to the results of the analysis, it was found that the physical component (FC) of the quality of life was high in the age group of 15-17 years compared with the group of 6-10 and 11 -14 years. in the second age group, a higher level of the psychological component of Quoll was recorded compared to the first and third groups. According to our survey, the impact of chronic or acute ENT disease on Quoll also depends on the specific ENT disease. Chronic inflammatory diseases of the nose and par nasal sinuses had the most negative impact on health. In acute diseases of the nose and paranasal sinuses, the LQ scale suffers the most, VT=58.8, BP=58.9, and GH=63.0.In chronic diseases of the nose and paranasal sinuses, those LQ scales that GH=51.5, RP=52.0, and VT=50.7 are most affected. In acute diseases of the nose and par nasal sinuses, the least disturbing components of Quoll are FF=92.9 points. In acute diseases of the pharynx, BP=53.3, VT=57.4, and GH=73.7 suffer the most. In chronic diseases of the pharynx, VT=57.1, GH=64.2, and MH=65.9 are the most affected. acute diseases of the pharynx had the least effect on FF=89.7 points, accumulated Quoll РН=73.7 points, RP=70.9 points. , and in chronic diseases, the following scales of Quoll suffer the least: accumulated Quoll PH=78.7 point), SF=75.4 points. In acute inflammatory diseases of the ear, the following scales characterizing Quoll are most often affected: BP=49.0, RP=50.0, VT=52.4. , as well as mental health parameters (MH=59.3).In chronic inflammatory diseases of the ear, the following indicators of QOL suffer the most: VT=69.6, the role of motor activity (RP=73.1), GH=62.3, as well as MH=77.0.In acute inflammatory diseases of the ear, the following scales characterizing Quoll are most often affected: BP, the role of RP, and PHI. In acute inflammatory diseases of the ear, the “physical function” QOL scale (FF = 83.8 points) and the total Quoll score (PH = 67.6 points) are least affected, and in chronic diseases = 85.8 points, РН=77.0 points, and РЕ=76.9 are the least affected QOL scales. In general, in acute ENT diseases, VT=57.0, GH=60.0 points, and BP=55.6 points suffer the most. In chronic ENT diseases, VT=56.7 and GH=57.7 points suffer the most, and to a lesser extent - FF=82.8 points and PH=71.5 points. Summarizing the data, it can be noted that chronic inflammatory diseases ENT organs have a more negative impact on quality of life indicators.

ABSTRACT. The aim of this study is to assess the effect of climate conditions on subjective well-being in Germany. Objective weather information will be merged with an existing panel data set. However, contrary to existing studies, our focus will be on SWB (and not depression). We believe this is interesting as one could argue that SWB is a more “fine-grained” measure of well-being than the incident of depression. Furthermore, we use a large data set that covers nearly a quarter of a century. Thus, the main research question is the following: Is there an association between changes in local temperature and SWB in Germany? Further (sub-)research questions will include the following: Do other weather conditions, such as humidity and rain relate with SWB? Does an observed relation between temperature and SWB differ among socio-economic and demographic groups?

For conducting the analysis survey data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (GSOEP) is used. This annual survey began in 1984 and it collects individual data for a representative sample of private households and persons in Germany from respondents aged 16 and above. Considering the amount of data compared to the other existing studies should make this data set statistically more relevant. The data set includes the subject’s perspective on its well-being alongside many other variables such as the geographical location, income, education, etc. which will be used as control variables. Weather data from from meteostat.net will be merged with the GSOEP data. This data is very accurate and quantitatively relevant as more than 1000 weather stations are listed in Germany. To fit the format of the weather data with the GSOEP data, weather data will be taken on a NUTS-3 level. This will allow us to match the weather reports to the location of every individual questioned during the surveys. The weather data will have daily records that are then used to form climate variables such as for example "heat days during the last 30 days".

ABSTRACT. Several studies have evaluated the impact of COVID-19 pandemic on individuals’ life satisfaction, but the interrelations between family members’ life and domain satisfaction during this period have received less attention. This study examined spillover and crossover associations between one parent’s job satisfaction, satisfaction with family life (SWFaL) and satisfaction with food-related life (SWFoL) on their own, the other parent’s, and their adolescent children’s life satisfaction (LS), and the influence of adolescents’ SWFaL and SWFoL on their own and their parents’ LS, in dual-earner parents with adolescents. Differences between spillover and crossover associations according to the parent’s gender and the moderating role of family sociodemographic variables and parents’ job-related variables were also explored. A sample of 860 dual-earner parents with adolescent children responded to an online questionnaire in two Chilean cities during 2020. Mothers, fathers and adolescents answered the Satisfaction with Life Scale, Overall Job Satisfaction Scale, the Satisfaction with Family Life Scale and the Satisfaction with Food-related Life Scale. Using the Actor-Partner Interdependence Model and structural equation modeling, results showed that fathers’ LS was positively associated with their own job satisfaction, SWFaL and SWFoL, and negatively with adolescents’ SWFoL. Likewise, mothers’ LS was positively associated with their own job satisfaction, SWFaL and SWFoL, with fathers’ and adolescents’ SWFaL, and negatively with adolescents’ SWFoL. Adolescents’ LS was positively associated with their own SWFaL and SWFoL, with fathers’ job satisfaction, and negatively with fathers’ SWFoL. Spillover and crossover associations for job satisfaction differed by the parent’s gender. Family socioeconomic status, parents’ age, adolescents’ age and gender moderated spillover and crossover associations between each parent’s job satisfaction, SWFaL and SWFoL on their own, the other parent’s and adolescents’ LS. These findings suggest that, for dual-earner parents with adolescent children, improving family members’ LS requires interventions that should be carried out not individually, but within the family unit. Funding: ANID, Fondecyt Project n° 1190017 and nº 1230060.

ABSTRACT. Work-to-family conflict levels have surged during the pandemic, but research shows that this conflict has been largely unaffected by lockdown measures, whereas family-to-work conflict has increased. In the latter case, family responsibilities have multiplied for those working from home. Family-to-work conflict has been shown to have negative consequences for parents, but less is known about its consequences for children’s well-being. This study tested the relationship between family-to-work conflict (FtoWC) and psychological distress and satisfaction with family life, and the mediating role of psychological distress between family-to-work conflict and satisfaction with family life, in dual-earner parents with adolescent children during the COVID-19 pandemic. A non-probabilistic sample of 860 dual-earner parents and one of their adolescent children (average age 13.1 years, 50.8% female) were recruited in Chile. Mothers and fathers answered an online questionnaire with a measure of family-to-work conflict. The three family members answered the Depression, Anxiety, and Stress Scale and the Satisfaction with Family Life Scale. Data was analysed using the Actor-Partner Interdependence Model with structural equation modelling. Results showed that both parents’ FtoWC was directly linked to lower satisfaction with family life, and indirectly via their own psychological distress. The father’s FtoWC was directly linked to lower satisfaction with family life in mothers, and indirectly via their own psychological distress to lower satisfaction with family life in mothers and adolescents. The mother’s FtoWC was indirectly linked via their own psychological distress to lower satisfaction with family life in fathers, and via the adolescents’ psychological distress to lower satisfaction with family life in adolescents. Implications of this study are discussed, indicating the need of family-oriented workplace policies to decrease both parents’ FtoWC and psychological distress. Funding: ANID, Fondecyt Project n° 1190017 and Fondecyt Project nº 1230060.

ABSTRACT. Labor participation has always been a hot topic in academic circle and a vital label in the process of China’s economic and social development. Therefore, the purpose this paper is to use CGSS 2015 data, starting from labor participation, and make a comparably comprehensive analysis of the influencing factors of subjective well-being of females. By conducting probit regressions, the paper reveals the impact of labor participation and socio-demographic conditions on the subjective well-being of females in Mainland China. First, the authors’ findings turn out that urban women do have a higher level of women’s subjective well-being when compared to rural women. Second, educational attainment has a significantly positive effect on subjective well-being only in urban areas, while having teen children is only statistically significant for rural residents. Third, the overall impact of employment conditions on women’s subjective well-being is reduced due to the transition of gender conceptions. In all, the evaluation of subjective well-being of females is reshaped by the overwhelming transition of society in Mainland China.

ABSTRACT. South Africa has made concerted efforts to eliminate inequalities in its population since the adoption of multiparty democracy in 1994. Social policies targeted at access to education, healthcare, employment, and state social grants have been adopted to drive the country towards equity and improve the quality of life of the previously marginalised. However, inequality has remained a major problem in the country. This study focuses on quality of life, especially the extent to which the sex of household head plays a role. The study analyses the 2020/21 Quality of Life (QoL) Six survey conducted by the Gauteng City-Region Observatory (GCRO) in the Gauteng province of South Africa. Multilevel linear regression with random effects at the ward and municipal levels, with interactions between sex of household head and race, home language, number of adults in household and grant status, were applied to data for 13,616 household proxy respondents. The results show that households headed by males had significantly higher QoL indices, and that this was more pronounced in Afrikaans and English speaking households. The study therefore concludes that the sex of household head significantly impacts the QoL of household members.

ABSTRACT. It is widely believed that social inequality is rising in contemporary society. Is that true? If social inequalities have increased that must reflect in greater differences in happiness among citizens in nations. We assessed changes in average happiness in nations over the last decades from the late 1940s up to 2021 using standard deviations of happiness. Happiness itself is defined as the subjective enjoyment of one's life-as-a-whole, which can be measured using self-reports. We found that happiness inequality is declining (48 trends), more than rising (16 trends), while in 133 trends we found no significant change. Hence there was no general trend towards greater inequality of happiness. The recent increase of happiness inequality is mainly found in Latin American nations, not in Western countries where social inequality is believed to rise.

ABSTRACT. Citizen happiness and their quality of life are key elements in the development of countries and in their recovery from events such as COVID-19 or the Russo-Ukrainian war. This study, carried out by the Intangibles and Quality of Life Observatory (IQLO) analyzes the effect of the armed conflict on the key aspects of citizen happiness. The definition of happiness incorporates two spheres of the individual: the social and the personal. From a social point of view, the model developed includes, after an exhaustive review of the literature, issues related to the living environment (family situation, trust, environment, commercial accessibility and public transport, green areas-sustainability, culture and sports, population abroad, health, education, housing prices and security); work and training environment (economic, employment situation, work environment, training, internet access); and effects of the COVID-19 pandemic (in the quality of life and in the family and work environment of those surveyed). The personal quality of life will be conditioned by physical and mental conditions; personal development; spirituality; and the way of life, constituting the elements not measured in the developed survey that will appear in the error term of the citizen happiness model. To analyze the effect of the war, the information provided by individual samples carried out between February and April 2021; and April and May 2022, respectively for Spanish citizens has been considered. The results show a gain in importance of the social quality of life compared to the personal one, the latter going from representing 41% to 35% if we compare the information in the two mentioned moments of time. In the social sphere, issues related to the family situation continue to be key to the quality of social life, accounting for around 38%. However, trust with the neighborhood and aspects related to the environment gain weight; and above all the economic-financial situation, which before represented 4.4% and now 9.7%. On the contrary, the importance of aspects related to culture and sport and COVID-19 decreases, the latter having an almost residual importance. Lastly, aspects related to the work environment and health services burst fort, among the conditioning factors of citizen happiness, being representative for the first time after the pandemic. Therefore, the new world situation derived from the Russo-Ukrainian conflict has motivated that the importance for the citizens happiness of economic-financial situation increase; the health services are now representative after the covid-19 pandemic and social quality of life gain importance.

ABSTRACT. The interface of work and family domains has received scholarly attention in recent decades because the interference of one domain into the other can have a substantial impact on both work and family-related outcomes as well as individuals’ health and well-being. The impact on well-being appears to be experienced differentially by people with various individual characteristics: Some people seem more resilient, while others are more vulnerable. Yet, the question of why the well-being of some people is severely affected by the interference between domains (roles) while others are affected less or not affected at all is still unclear. In this study, we address the question on the role of people's life goals in this relationship to clarify the existing inconsistency. Based on the framework of conservation of resources, self-regulation, and social role theories, this study examines the role of life goals as a moderator in the impact of work-family interference on well-being. Using the data from Wave 8 and Wave 10 of the German Family Panel Survey (pairfam), these relationships were analyzed for men and women, using Structural Equation Modeling. Findings show that life goals indeed moderate the relationship between work-to-family interference and well-being. The moderator role of life goals is stronger than that of gender. When work interferes with family, people with high agentic and low communal goals are less satisfied with their life than those who primarily pursue communal life goals or whose agentic and communal goals are balanced. Further, women with high agentic goals experience the negative effect of work-to-family interference, while men with high communal goals experience the negative effect of family-to-work interference on life satisfaction more strongly than other individuals in the same-gender group. Altogether, these results help to explain the inconsistent findings on the impact of work-family interference on well-being. Finally, the theoretical and practical contributions are discussed in light of the current findings.

ABSTRACT. This research is conducted to examine how the online transaction experience and consumption life satisfaction during the outbreak of COVID-19, and furthermore, how the aspects of the change differ by generation. We analyzed ‘2019 and 2021 Consumption Life Indicators in KOREA’ that has been biennially produced by Korea Consumer Agency since 2013. Respondents of the analysis data consisted of 16,384 adult consumers between the ages from 20 to 69. We classified the generation as eight different groups based on the results of previous studies : Z (born after 1995), Young Millennial (born 1989-1994), Old Millennial (born 1981-1988), Young X (born 1975-1980), Old X (born 1970) ~ 1974), High growth (1964 ~ 1969), Baby Boomer (1955 ~ 1963), Industrialization (born before 1954).

As a result, first, the proportion of consumers who used online shopping during the COVID-19 period increased in all eight generations, but the pattern differed by generation. The middle-aged generation X and the high growth, Baby Boomer generation have a low absolute number of online transaction experience rates, but the experience rate increased more steeply than the younger generation Z and Millennial groups during COVID-19. Z and Millennial generations have high absolute levels of online transaction experience, and the experience rate increased during COVID-19, but it showed a modest increase compared to the middle-aged. In the case of the eldest Industrialization Generation, both the absolute value and the increase rate of the online transaction experience rate were the lowest among the eight groups.

Second, during the COVID-19 period, Koreans' consumption life satisfaction has been increased in all eight generations, and the pattern of increase was also similar. However, when the pattern was compared according to the presence or absence of online transaction experience, it showed different aspects by generation. In the six groups, except Old Millennial and Young X generation, the consumption life satisfaction of the group with online transaction experience increased more significantly during the COVID-19 period, and between them, the consumption life satisfaction of the eldest group, that is Industrialization Generation was shown the most significant difference among with or without online transaction experience.

These results show that the difference in online transaction experience and consumer satisfaction by generation has become larger and clearer during the COVID-19 period. Due to the acceleration of digital transformation during the COVID-19 era, middle-aged consumers have experienced more online transactions, and the positive effect of using online transactions on consumption life satisfaction has become larger and clearer. However, in the case of the Industrialization Generation, the eldest among the survey subjects, the effect of online transaction experience on consumption life satisfaction was the largest and most obvious, even though the level of increase in their online transaction experience rate during the COVID-19 period was the lowest. Considering that the Industrialization Generation's level of consumption life satisfaction was the lowest among the eight generations, policy efforts to improve the online transaction competency of the elderly and thereby improve their subjective well-being should be strengthened.

ABSTRACT. Background: Character strengths are usually measured through self-ratings, e.g. with the VIA-IS survey. There is, however, a debate concerning if self-ratings or other-ratings have highest predictive validity. In a meta-analysis of the predictive validity of personality on academic achievement and job performance, Connelly and Ones (2010) found that “other-ratings yielded predictive validities substantially greater than and incremental to self-ratings” (p. 1092). Objective: To examine whether self-ratings or other-ratings of character strengths are best for predicting military and academic performance in army cadets. Methods: The sample comprised 181 army cadets from three cohorts, attending a three years Bachelor’s degree program at the Norwegian Military Academy (NMA). Self- and other-ratings of 12 character strengths, selected as particularly relevant for succeeding as a military officer, were done one year before final graduation, when the cadets participated in a highly stressful combat fatigue course. Self-ratings were done with VIA-IS survey prior to the combat fatigue course, and with a character strengths observational instrument (OBSCIF) immediately after the course. Other-ratings for each army cadet were done with OBSCIF immediately after the combat fatigue course by 7-9 peer cadets from their own squad. Military performance was measured by two supervisors following them 24/7, who rated the cadets’ performance on a 1-5 scale after the combat fatigue course. Academic performance was measured as Grade Point Average from their Bachelor’s degree program. Results: Self-ratings of the 12 character strengths on VIA-IS and on OBSCIF correlated satisfactory, and other-ratings showed high consistency among the 7-9 raters. The VIA Survey showed lowest predictive validity, followed by self-rated OBSCIF measures, while other-rated OBSCIF measures of character strengths showed good to very good predictive validity for both military and academic performance. Conclusion: This study indicates that other-ratings of character strengths predict military and academic performance much better than self-ratings.

ABSTRACT. Adult children are often a member of their parents’ social network and provide emotional and instrumental support to them. Therefore, researchers tend to argue that childless older adults experience lower levels of well-being than their counterparts with children. However, adult children can also be a source of stress if there are conflicts, dependence, or disappointment, or they may be unavailable or unable to provide social support. For these reasons, it is important to measure all components of subjective well-being separately. Previous research only seldomly took into account that subjective well-being is a multidimensional construct and that parenthood can affect the dimensions of well-being in different ways. This study aims to extend the literature by looking more closely at the different dimensions of subjective well-being than most previous studies did. Additionally, the study examines whether the consequences of childlessness for well-being differ depending on individual’s age and gender, and on the quality of the parent-child relationship. Using longitudinal survey data from the German Ageing Survey (DEAS) from 1996 to 2021, we were able to measure each of the three components of well-being (life satisfaction, positive affect, and negative affect) isolated from each other. We used linear random-effects regression models to estimate levels for parents and childless people. We restricted our sample to individuals between the ages of 45 and 85 and to parents whose youngest child is at least 18 years old. The results show that childless individuals experience lower subjective well-being in all three components. The relationship between childlessness and well-being was moderated by parents’ gender but not by their age. Childless men reported lower life satisfaction and positive affect compared to fathers whereas for women such a difference was insignificant. Parents meeting their children infrequently and/ or feeling not emotionally close to their children fare only slightly or not even better than childless people. The different outcome of childlessness on well-being across parents’ gender indicates that women are able to compensate for the lack of children when remaining childless. Moreover, our findings suggest that parents do not benefit from having children by their mere existence but that the quality of the parent-child relationship is important for cognitive as well as affective well-being of parents at higher age.

ABSTRACT. Drawing from the ecological model of aging, social capital theory, and the active aging perspective, this study investigates the extent to which community engagement influences life satisfaction and whether the relation is mediated by social network and capital. Further, this study examines whether gender and age moderated the above relationships. Data were collected from 1,036 retired older adults in Chengdu, China in 2022. The results of this study show that community engagement was positively associated with social capital (β=0.54) and that social capital was positively related to life satisfaction (β=0.28). Social capital fully mediated the relationship between community engagement and life satisfaction. Community engagement had an indirect effect on life satisfaction via social capital (β=0.15). The findings from the moderation analysis suggest that community engagement and social capital had larger effects on life satisfaction for male than female older adults, and for older adults aged 70 and above than older adults aged below 70. The findings suggest that community engagement could be an important factor for improving social capital and life satisfaction among retired older adults in China, especially for male and older elderly.

ABSTRACT. Due to digitisation and automation processes, work is changing considerably because some job tasks which were previously performed by humans are substituted by machines while others are complemented and gaining importance. This might influence employees in two different ways: on the one hand, automation and changing tasks might increase job strain and affect job or life satisfaction and health negatively through, e.g., cognitive overload, loss of meaning, or the fear of technological substitution. On the other hand, automation and task changes might be a chance for employees if technology improves their work when, e.g., tasks are automated that are undesirable due to monotony or hard physical work, which could reduce creative constraints and health burdens. However, research on the consequences of task change on working conditions and workers' well-being is rather scarce. We contribute to fill these gaps by analysing longitudinal data from the German National Educational Panel Study (NEPS). We focus on job tasks according to the “Task-Based Approach” by Autor et al. (2003) and examine their impact on working conditions and satisfaction with health, job, and life as measurements of well-being using fixed effects models, allowing for unobserved heterogeneity. Preliminary results show that a change in job tasks has an impact on working conditions. A reduction in substitutable routine and an increase in complementary analytic and interactive non-routine tasks increase performance and time pressure as well as job strain. However, there is also a partial improvement in well-being associated with these changes. Finally, performing less manual and more autonomous tasks increases working conditions and well-being in many domains. These findings are highly relevant because the future of many jobs will be digital and automated. We offer insights into the impact of changing job tasks on workplace and well-being indicators, raising awareness that tomorrow's work does not inherently come with better working conditions and health, which can be used for, e.g., occupational health management.

ABSTRACT. The despair narrative—or hypothesized underlying reason for increased midlife morality among low-SES non-Hispanic whites in the United States—is rooted in Case and Deaton’s “preliminary but plausible story” of multigenerational cumulative disadvantage. One in which increased rates of despair are understood to be linked to heightened levels of reported psychological distress and pain that are arguably due to “the destruction of a way of life” among low-SES non-Hispanic whites, but there is a lack of consensus surrounding why a spike in despair would be concentrated among non-Hispanic whites and not racial/ethnic minorities. Bardo (under review) drew on a multidimensional proxy for despair (i.e., languishing; Keyes, 2002) and an innovative SES index in two waves of the Midlife in the United States (MIDUS) study that closely coincide with the rise in midlife mortality (i.e., 1995-1996 and 2011-2014) to assess whether despair has uniquely increased among low-SES non-Hispanic whites in midlife. Results show that, contrary to the popular narrative, a rising tide of despair is not washing through this demographic group—or any other group for that matter. However, there has been some increase in despair and widening SES and racial/ethnic gaps that partially corroborate the narrative. What is most concerning, is an observed increase in the prevalence of pain coupled with psychological distress and drug/alcohol misuse that is uniquely concentrated among low-SES middle-aged non-Hispanic whites who are suffering from despair. While the focus of this literature has largely been on mortality, emergent research points to a need to also examine morbidity (i.e., health) outcomes. The current study builds on these findings of increased vulnerability among low-SES middle-aged non-Hispanic whites who are suffering from despair (i.e., languishing) by examining whether the socioeconomic gradient in the association between health and Keyes’s multidimensional measure for complete mental health (i.e., flourishing) has shifted over time. An innovative SES index was used minimize selection bias that would result from changes in the composition of educational attainment over time if it were used as an indicator for SES. A battery of health measures (e.g., self-rated health, physical functioning, and chronic conditions) were examined. Preliminary results show that there is indeed a steepening socioeconomic gradient in the association between health and flourishing, and that this is due to (a) an increasing vulnerability among low-SES folks suffering from languishing but also (b) an increasing protective effect of flourishing among those with high-SES. Further analyses will focus on identifying potential mediating/moderating effects of BMI, pain, psychological distress, drug/alcohol use, smoking, and health care utilization as well as optimism and future-orientation. Findings will be discussed in terms of quality-of-life indicators for policy and public health efforts.

ABSTRACT. Poor housing conditions such as overcrowding, dampness, and inadequate thermal insulation often fall within the challenging realm of housing affordability. These conditions seriously risk a household's health and wellbeing (H+W) and the entire national health system. Decisions made during the design development stages of a residential building can contribute to both households' H+W and housing affordability. This study presents a review to explore the connection between housing affordability, households' H+W, and design. It aims to highlight the designers' role in advocating the rights of households' H+W in the design process of affordable housing. The review is carried out to achieve the following objectives: (1) to understand the common measuring methods of housing affordability to identify its potential to inform design stages, (2) to draw designers' attention to some of the current global challenges on H+W and affordability such as housing prices, energy poverty, and Covid-19 pandemic, (4) Identify the areas where design can contribute to H+W and housing affordability. The review revealed four key factors to be incorporated when labelling a house as "Affordable" to respect households' H+W. It also identified four housing affordability goals for designers and providers to support low-income households' H+W resilience during stressful times. In addition, three cost-related categories have been identified where design can contribute to housing affordability.

ABSTRACT. INTRODUCTION: After an Acquired Brain Injury (ABI), family life experience profound changes, which affect their well-being as a unit. Quality of life of family members and family functioning are frequently studied from the perspective of the caregivers. Analyzing the perspective of survivors is essential for enhancing family quality of life. AIM: To understand what family quality of life is from survivors’ perspectives, and to important areas of supporting family life. METHODS: Twenty-four people with ABI (Cerebrovascular accident = 13; Traumatic brain injury = 8; Anoxia = 1; Tumor = 1; Brain infection = 1) were recruited across Spanish Brain Injury Federation. Three focus groups about family well-being were conducted. Following verbatim transcription, a thematic analysis (Braun & Clarke, 2006) was performed to identify main domains of family quality of life and their indicators. RESULTS: Topics about family quality of life were identified. Some of them accounted for family relationships, individual family members’ well-being, family resources, or context surrounding family life, and those important for survivors within family life. DISCUSSION: Results suggest the importance of addressing family quality of life by acknowledging the survivors’ perspectives and what aspects of family life are important for them. From a family-centered approach, professionals should align the different survivors’ goals and needs with other family members in order to provide supports to family with the aim of enhancing its quality of life as a unit.

ABSTRACT. BACKGROUND: The reliability and validity of the Spanish version of the Long-Term Quality of Life Instrument (LTQL), a measure designed specifically to assess quality of life (QoL) for long-term cancer survivors, has not yet been evaluated. OBJECTIVE: The purpose of this study was to validate the Spanish version of the LTQL in long-term breast cancer survivors (≥5 years since diagnosis). METHODS: Cross-sectional study was conducted between 1 January 2020 and 31 December 2021 in long-term breast cancer survivors recruited from patient associations and health care centers. The Spanish version of LTQL was applied to a sample of 340 Spanish long-term breast cancer survivors (mean 58.3 ±10.4 years). LTQL consist of 34 items rated on a 5-point Likert scale: from 0 (not at all) to 4 (very much). The LTQL instrument assesses four factors: somatic concerns (14 items), spiritual/philosophical view of life (11 items), fitness (5 items) and social support (4 items). Reliability was evaluated using internal consistency and test-retest. Structural validity was determined by the confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) and Rasch analysis was used to assess the unidimensionality of each scale. The IBM SPSS statistics, Mplus and Winsteps were employed for the analysis. RESULTS: Internal consistency was high for all factors, with Cronbach alpha ranging from 0.83 to 0.89. Test-retest intraclass correlation coefficients were high, all above 0.7. CFA provided satisfactory fit indices: RMSEA (Root Mean Square Error of Approximation)=0.073, CFI (Comparative Fix Index)=0.909, and TLI (Tucker-Lewis Index)=0.901. All factor loadings were higher than 0.4 and statistically significant (p<0.001). On the other side, the Rash analysis showed four misfitting items in the somatic concerns factor, one item in the spiritual/philosophical view of life factor, and one item in the social support factor. After removing the misfitting items, unidimensionality was supported in all factors. CONCLUSIONS: Overall, our findings support the validity and reliability of four-dimensional construct of the LTQL and Ferrell’s QoL model. Spanish LTQL is a validated QoL questionnaire to be used in long-term breast cancer survivors.

ABSTRACT. BACKGROUND: Breast cancer is the most common cancer among women. Breast cancer patients suffer from several negative consequences years after treatment. This could affect their quality of life (QoL) and psychological well-being. OBJECTIVE: The purpose of this study was to describe the QoL and psychological wellbeing and their predictors for female long-term breast cancer survivors (≥5 years since diagnosis). METHODS: Cross-sectional study was conducted between 1 January 2020 and 31 December 2021 in long-term breast cancer survivors recruited from patient associations and health care centers. Assessment of QoL was performed using Long-Term Quality of Life Instrument (LTQL) and the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale (HADS). It was completed with Brief COPE Inventory-28, Family Functioning APGAR Scale, DUKE-UNC Functional Social Support Scale, Revised Life Orientation Test (LOT-R) and other health and sociodemographic characteristics. Data analysis was performed with descriptive statistics and multiple linear regression analyses. RESULTS: 340 Spanish long-term breast cancer survivors participated in the study with a mean age of 60.73 ±10.1. The mean LTQL global was 89.6 over 136 (SD=19.9), a higher score indicating better QoL. Results of HADS scale showed that 25.9% had depression, while 52% had anxiety. 23.2% of the participants reported receiving psychosocial support. The significant predictors for global QoL were LOT-R, COPE28, lumpectomy, chemotherapy and HADS depression (R2=0.412, p<0.001). A worst QoL was related with greater depression, being pessimism, low resilient coper, not having had a lumpectomy and have been treated with radiation therapy or chemotherapy. CONCLUSIONS: Long-term breast cancer survivors in Spain have overall moderate QoL scores, and quite impaired psychological wellbeing. Healthcare providers and policymakers should strive to provide holistic intervention strategies to improve the multiple dimensions of QoL and the psychological wellbeing of this vulnerable population.

ABSTRACT. Background This study investigated the relationship between trauma exposure and suicidal ideation. Moreover, this study examines the moderating roles of organizational climate on the association between trauma exposure and suicidal ideation in Korean male firefighters.

Methods A total of 15,104 male firefighters who completed a questionnaire were analyzed. The data were obtained using an online self-administered questionnaire from the Firefighter Research on Enhancement of Safety and Health Study. Poisson regression analysis was performed to determine the effects of trauma exposure on suicidal ideation and the moderating effect of organizational climate.

Results The results showed that 389 firefighters (2.6%) responded that they had experienced suicidal ideation. In the final model, trauma exposure was positively related to suicidal ideation (adjusted risk ratio [aRR], 1.076; 95% confidence interval [CI]: 1.051–1.103), and organizational climate was negatively associated with suicidal ideation (aRR, 0.772; 95% CI: 0.739–0.806). Additionally, the interaction term (trauma exposure × organizational climate) was related to suicidal ideation (aRR, 1.016; 95% CI: 1.009–1.023).

Conclusions This study suggests that trauma exposure might play a significant role in developing suicidal ideation and that positive organizational climate moderates the negative effects of trauma exposure on suicidal ideation among firefighters. It is necessary to perform a follow-up study of various intervention strategies to maintain a healthy organizational climate or work environment. Such interventions should promote lasting trust within teams, provide social support and belonging, and nurture job value.

ABSTRACT. COVID-19 forced governments around the world to act quickly in an effort to curb the spread of the virus, and posed a number of economic, geographical, legal, and cultural challenges. The policies implemented in the EU to curb the spread of the virus have proven to be effective from an epidemiological perspective, although the true effect of these policies on the well-being of the population is still unknown. Social relationships are an essential part of human evolution, and their absence has generated anxiety, depression and mental disorders that have drastically reduced the subjective well-being of individuals. In the current context, social capital has become a key tool for reversing the negative effects of the crisis, through cooperation, solidarity, trust and reciprocity. Despite the growing interest in the study of social capital in relation to health and happiness, we have not found any work focused on measuring the effect of social capital on health and happiness during the COVID-19 pandemic in Europe. We apply a multilevel structural equation model (GSEM) to gauge what role social capital plays in the health and happiness of Europeans, using data from the Life, Work and COVID-19 survey conducted by Eurofound. We control for the effect of factors such as gender, employment, age, lack of income, education and whether or not the individual lives in a rural area. Using the models applied, we identify significant linkages between happiness and social capital at the macro and micro levels. The research results suggest that institutional trust may play a key role in reversing some of the negative effects of the pandemic.

ABSTRACT. Background: Psychiatry and clinical psychology have invested a lot of energy in the thorough examination of the characteristics of mental disorders, but less into the exploration of what capacity of “life-ability” is available for people living with mental disorders and to what extent professionals can help what kind of clients. Aims: Our aim in the present study is to verify the two-continuum mental health model in adult clinical sample in the light of the new, psychological immune competence-based Maintainable Positive Mental Health Theory. A further aim is to investigate the interrelationship between positive mental health and mental disorder by examining various groups of mental disorders with different levels of severity. Finally, we aim to identify mental health profiles. In the present paper, we introduce the preliminary results of the ongoing research. Methods: A cross-sectional self-report survey-based research design is employed. Participants filled in the Mental Health Test and the Symptom Check List 90. Psychiatrist and clinical psychologist were asked to provide a paper-based report on the patients’ mental disorder. The sample (n = 233; 90 males, 139 females, 4 not wanted to identify; mean age: 42.8, SD = 16.7) was recruited from four Hungarian hospitals. Results: The two-continuum model of mental health in the light of the Maintainable Positive Mental Health Theory was verified by the identification of two independent, moderately correlating (r = –.53, p < 0.001) factors using exploratory factor analysis (eigenvalues: 6.84 and 2.17; cumulative explained variance ratio: 0.42 and 0.17) and confirmatory factor analysis (RMSR: 0.03; TLI: 0.92; RMSEA: 0.1; cumulative explained variance: 0.66; Chi-square: 309, p < 0.001). Then we separated groups based on the mental disorder diagnoses reported by the clinical psychologists and psychiatrists. Analysis of variance showed significant differences between the seven mental disorder groups. Finally, four mental health profiles (mentally suffering, enervated, flourishing, languishing) were identified using latent profile analysis, in which we examined the symptoms of mental health based on the Mental Health Test and the symptoms of mental disorders based on the Symptom Check List 90 in one model. Conclusion: Our study draws attention to the fact that “optimal human functioning” can be understood in ways that includes, and not excludes, people living with mental disorder

ABSTRACT. Background: Stability and change are integral parts of human development. During our lives we face various transitional periods with the transition to parenthood being among the most profound. Mostly taking place during early middle adulthood, this period is associated with various physical, psychological, and social changes in the lives of new parents. While often considered as challenging, these changes may also create room for psychological growth and increased wellbeing. Aim: This longitudinal study aims to assess fluctuations in psychological growth and wellbeing during the transition to parenthood and to examine to what extent these are associated with factors such as social support and parental self-efficacy and whether these associations are moderated by gender. Method: We use data of a 4-wave longitudinal study among first-time Dutch and Flemish parents. They complete a survey during the second (T1) and third trimester of pregnancy (T2), as well as at six weeks (T3) and six months (T4) following birth. Results: We will present first results on the associations between social support and parental self-efficacy with respectively psychological growth and wellbeing in the transition to parenthood. Additionally, our results will provide a first insight into the moderating role of gender on these relationships. Conclusion: The findings from this study have important implications for promoting the mental health and wellbeing of new parents. A better understanding of the factors associated with psychological growth and wellbeing in the transition to parenthood can inform the development of interventions aimed at supporting new parents during this challenging period in their lives. Furthermore, the examination of gender differences in these associations will contribute to a more nuanced understanding of the experiences of first-time parents and how they may vary between men and women.

ABSTRACT. Few studies on health determinants take into account the generation to which people belong. Each generation present different perceptions, attitudes, expectations and values resulting from the different situations experienced, which impact their behaviour. Besides, certain generational differences have been found at work in terms of job satisfaction, identification with the company, and professional expectations. On the other hand, paid work has previously been shown to have a positive effect on health. However, not all active population have the same labour status. Our aim is to explore the association between different situations in the job market and people’s self-rated health (SRH), and how those relationships vary from baby boomers to younger labour force, focusing particular attention on gender. Data from the Spanish Living Conditions Survey were used. We focused our study on the Spanish active population aged 21-65 years. We carried out separate logistic estimations for Spanish people participating in the labour market, depending on their generation -baby boom and generation X. We performed various logistic regression analyses, calculating odds ratios (ORs) and confidence intervals (95% CIs), including psychosocial, material and contextual control variables. The results showed that boomers with an employment status other than that of full-time worker (except involuntary part-time) display higher estimated odds of reporting poor health. However, the different labour statuses were not significant for younger generation Xers. Unemployment is associated with poorer SRH for both female and male boomers, although voluntary part-time work and being self-employed are only relevant for female boomers’ SRH. In the case of generation Xers, a positive association was only found between unemployment and poor SRH for men. It is worth noting the importance of social capital in health for both generations with regard to psychological wellbeing. These results infer the presence of health inequalities for Spanish boomers depending on their labour status, especially for female boomers.

ABSTRACT. Job is central to people's lives. They spend a lot of time at their workplace, so working conditions are important to their well-being. When researchers study job quality, they mainly distinguish two dimensions: first, intrinsic job characteristics, related to features linked to the tasks to be performed; second, employment quality, which encompasses the conditions and relations of employment (working hours, type of contract…). In our study we centered in the first dimension, considering job quality in relation to job demands and resources according to how they impact on people´s well-being (Bakker and Demerouti, 2008). Different working conditions affect workers’ well-being in different ways. Since these conditions are not always the same for men and women, their impact on well-being can vary by gender. Moreover, this variation may be different for each generation. The aim of this study is to model subjective well-being of workers by generation through structural equations, where job quality is approximated by a latent class model. This is important at a time of great uncertainty when the presence of covid-19 had an impact on the working lives of the majority. Data from the European Working Conditions Telephone Survey (EWCTS) 2021 were employed carried out by Eurofound. WHO-5 well-being index was used to assess subjective well-being. Individuals were divided into three generations: baby boomers, generation X and generation Y The estimation model for establishing causal relationships between variables is based on structural equation models. These models make it possible to establish a set of causal relationships between variables that determine direct effects and induced indirect effects, including several latent variables that are not directly measurable and are not determined a priori. The proposed analysis is carried out in the different countries of the European Union. The results of our structural equations modeling show a causal relationship between the subjective well-being and specific dimensions of the job quality, which is different according to the generation and to the gender considered.

ABSTRACT. The aim of this article is double: first, we study whether there is a general gender health gap in Spain considering not only self-rated health but also mental health. Secondly, we analyze whether this gender gap is maintained regardless of whether individuals live in an urban or rural environment. To achieve these goals, using Spanish data from the European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions (2018), we estimate several multilevel models, with individuals (level 1) nested within 17 regions (level 2). We considered two dependent variables: self-rated health and mental health. To measure mental health, we have generated the Mental Health Inventory (MHI-5) variable from the 5 questions asked in the survey: How often you were especially nervous person? How often you felt so down in the dumps that nothing could cheer you up? How often you felt calm and peaceful? Have you felt downhearted and blue? And how often you felt happy? Our results show some differences between both kinds of health indicators. We found that women have worse mental health than men both in the town and in the city, but residing in rural areas is positively related to better mental health of women, and this is not true for men. However, in terms of perceived health, gender inequalities are only significant in urban centers with a large population. On the contrary, we did not find significant gender health gap in rural areas.

These results are important to understand the different impact on each dimensions of health of deficits in rural attention, and how the habitat where people live is relevant to their subjective health and their general perceptions of health. The study also shows relevant gender differences.

ABSTRACT. Background, aims, and objectives According to self-determination theory, human well-being is universally dependent upon the satisfaction of three basic psychological needs: autonomy, competence and relatedness. While previous research indeed suggests that associations between basic psychological need satisfaction (BPNS) and well-being are comparable between adults of different ages, the antecedents of BPNS may differ between individuals and across life phases. The following two studies therefore aim to map demographic, sociopsychological, and emotional antecedents of BPNS across the lifespan.

Method Study 1: Secondary analysis of previously collected cross-sectional survey data from N=380 young adults (18–34 yrs), N=261 early middle-aged (35–49 yrs), N=453 late middle-aged (50–64 yrs), and N=344 old adults (65+ yrs). Study 2: A two-wave longitudinal survey study aiming to include a total of N ≥ 550 Dutch speaking adults across a wide range of age groups. BPNS was measured in both studies using the Dutch version of the Basic Psychological Need Satisfaction and Frustration Scale, and demographic characteristics were assessed by self-report. Study 2 additionally included self-report measures for self-regulation of opinions and decision-making, environmental mastery, locus of control, positive and negative affect, subjective financial well-being, leisure time, and social role demands. Data were analysed using regression techniques.

Results Study 1: No demographic factors were consistently associated with BPNS in each age group, but several unique associations were observed for different age groups. Female (vs. male) gender was uniquely associated with less competence satisfaction among young adults, but with more relatedness satisfaction in late middle age. Having a job (vs. being unemployed) was positively associated with relatedness satisfaction in early middle age, while income level was positively related to autonomy satisfaction only among old adults. Study 2: First findings are expected by mid-2023.

Conclusions Preliminary findings suggest that the study of BPNS may benefit from an age-graded lifespan perspective.

ABSTRACT. When eligible for retirement, older workers need to decide whether to exit or continue working. How should retirees make a series of decisions to pursue greater happiness in retirement life? Should they retire earlier, continue working, or be fully retired? What type of post-retirement work should they take? This study proposes five questions that older workers may want to know about how working after retirement affects their happiness. A new research synthesis technique was employed in this study to standardize the measurement of happiness. A review of 35 studies was conducted, yielding 199 findings related to the relationship between retirement and happiness, sourced from the World Database of Happiness' online findings archive. The findings were linked to their respective pages in the World Database of Happiness's online "findings archive," which we used to analyze and synthesize the data to identify predominant trends and results. The results show that older adults without paid work tend to be happier, while post-retirement work can enhance happiness, but only for those who retire voluntarily and successfully find bridge jobs. The findings have implications for both individual choices and government policies. It suggests improving job opportunities in bridge employment and considering the costs of raising the pension age to promote greater happiness in older adults.

ABSTRACT. Background and objectives: The global challenge of mental health problems calls for different approaches; both treating mental health disorders, preventing mental health problems, and promoting mental health and wellbeing for all. School-based interventions are a primary tool in universal prevention to promote mental health and alleviate loneliness.

The Norwegian government decided to implement “public health and life skills” as a new interdisciplinary topic at all primary and secondary school levels from the year 2020, in order to promote mental and somatic health. However, research-based teaching material on this topic is scarce in Norway. Therefore, we will develop and protocolize an evidence-based intervention built on Five Ways to Wellbeing and investigate its effects on health behaviors, mental health, and wellbeing among school pupils aged 10 to 16 in Moss Municipality in Norway. The study starts in November 2023 and finishes in November 2024.

Our intervention will be based on the Five Ways to Wellbeing program, which is a set of evidence-based public mental health messages aimed at improving the mental health and wellbeing of the whole population. They were developed by the New Economics Foundation in the UK.

Study design: We will use the quasi-experimental Extended Selection Cohorts (ESC) design. The ESC design is an option for real-life settings when an RCT is not feasible, because the ESC design makes it possible to compare same-age treatment groups. The ESC design is a cohort-longitudinal design with adjacent cohorts, that are measured at two or more time points.

In our study, we will collect data from each cohort (i.e., school grade) five times: at baseline, immediately after the last teaching session in week 6 of the intervention, and 3, 6, and 12 months after baseline measurements, respectively. At 12 months follow-up, each cohort will be compared to the same-age adjacent baseline cohort group.

In order to separate any effects of the intervention from changes in variables due to other causes, we will apply a «wait list control group» element, i.e., delayed intervention: ½ of the schools will start the intervention in November 2023, while the remaining schools will start the intervention approx. 7 weeks later. Results will be published in 2024-2025

Acknowledgements: The study is funded by Moss Municipality, PROMENTA, Norwegian Institute of Public Health, and the University of Oslo. Sponsored by the County Governor of Oslo and Viken.

ABSTRACT. Rural depopulation springing from out-migration has long been a major policy concern in Germany. The phenomenon jeopardizes the provision of equal living conditions, as stated in §72 paragraph 2 Grundgesetz (Basic Constitutional Law), by accelerating regional disparities, undermining social cohesion and connectivity, and exacerbating low levels of education and skills in rural areas. Markedly, the aforementioned problems negatively impact the well-being of people in rural areas. With several steps taken to tackle rural out-migration and only paltry progress, the phenomenon has proved to be persistent, especially in East Germany. While existing literature points to a significant influence of well-being on migration, less is known about the well-being of those who stay and their reasons for staying. Emphasis on the staying population allows us to ascertain the indicators supporting the staying behaviour and to better predict out-migration trends. Further, most available studies use single-item measures such as self-reported life satisfaction as an indicator of well-being, ignoring this concept’s multidimensionality. A multidimensional consideration of well-being has at least two advantages: First, it enables us to systematically identify indicators that explain staying in or leaving a rural region. Second, it allows us to consider aspects of well-being that have not yet been considered in this context, such as the concept of place attachment. Against this background, this study explores the factors that explain rural people's decisions to leave or stay in rural regions. In doing so, we develop a well-grounded conceptual framework for assessing people’s migration decisions with respect to their individual levels of well-being, focusing on place attachment. With our attention on East Germany, we design a Multidimensional Well-being Index (MWI) for Germany. Unlike the common dashboards, the single headline statistic projected by this index will make it a more appropriate guide for policies aiming at achieving equal living conditions. Our statistical analysis involves a counting-based approach for computing the MWI inspired by the Alkire-Foster method. This approach allows for tracking of well-being differentiated for prospering and declining rural regions as well as different sub-groups, such as age, gender, minority, and ethnic groups. As a first step, descriptive spatial analysis is used to map the geographical patterns in well-being levels and depopulation trends to divulge the differential incidence and levels of well-being across regions. We use individual-level data from the German Socioeconomic Panel (GSOEP) Study, which we merge with regional-level data from, among others, the German Federal Institute for Research on Building, Urban Affairs, and Spatial Development (BBSR) and the official crime statistics from the German Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA). Our findings will generate new insights into the body of knowledge that will fit into the broad arena of discussions aiming at advising programmes and policies to address depopulation, revitalize the countryside and improve the quality of life in East Germany.

ABSTRACT. Living in a health and wealth desert, or an area with limited healthcare, inadequate food access, and expensive financial products, exacerbates existing barriers that impact quality of life for individuals and families. Using a qualitative approach, this project explores the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on individuals living in these communities. Drawing from empowerment theory, we explore the consequences of imposed powerlessness and misalignment of resources in a post pandemic era. We discuss the crucial intersection between individual and community as well as strategies that can help improve quality of life.

ABSTRACT. Increasing residential mobility is said to challenge existing social support systems as mobility raises geographic distances between family members. Since family social support is essential for health and well-being, this study investigates whether residential mobility affects familial social support following changes in proximity to family and kin. By applying a step-wise linear regression on data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) study, this paper is looking at variations between different residential mobility trajectories regarding social support provision and spatial proximity to family members in Germany over a 10-year period. Our findings show that people who are moving within Germany are receiving significantly more social support from their family and kin, while internationally mobile respondents receive less compared to non-mobile people. Mediation analyses show that proximity to family and kin are accounting for the negative effect of international mobility on social support but cannot explain the positive effect of internal migration.

ABSTRACT. The problem of depopulation in rural areas has been gaining interest in the public debate. Several studies have shown that the decline in population in the long term generates a series of important consequences for governments and local communities alike since –among others– it leads to lower economic return per inhabitant and lower levels of investment (Hospers 2013). In the case of the European Union, chronic population decline has become a common pattern of demographic change in many countries, with rural areas "emptying out" as urbanization has continued to expand in much of Europe. Avoiding the territorial inequalities caused by this phenomenon of depopulation –which we term rural-urban– has been, and indeed continues to be, one objective of the European Union’s political agenda. Subjective well-being is often thought of as a measure of quality of life from the perspective of individuals. Many studies have focused on purely individual aspects (Klein 2013) without taking into account what is known as quality of life from a collective point of view; for example, the characteristics of a population group, a district, a region or society as a whole (Delhey and Dragolov 2016). In this sense, in recent years, aspects such as friendship, trust, associationism, volunteerism and civic engagement have gained importance in research (Haller and Hadler 2006), with such aspects coming to be known as "relational goods" and/or social capital (Delhey and Dragolov 2016). As regards territorial differences in subjective well-being depending on the degree of urbanization, one further finding is that rural residents in developing countries tend to report higher levels of subjective welfare than urban residents (Sørensen 2021), which is known as the “rural happiness paradox”. In contrast, in large cities, the declared average levels of well-being show signs of decline after a certain level of development (Morrison 2020). Ironically, it is this phase that has given rise to the term "urban happiness paradox". Given the connection between happiness, social capital, social cohesion and degree of urbanization, our main objective is to explore what contribution social capital makes to explaining differences in subjective welfare between rural and urban areas in the EU. Evidence suggests that Europeans are happier in rural areas in wealthier countries that have higher levels of social capital and social cohesion. Promoting not only wealth, but also more cohesive societies and individuals with higher social capital can help to curb depopulation in Europe's rural areas. In order to achieve these objectives, we aim to work with the European Social Survey of 2018. From a methodological point of view, we adopt a multilevel econometric approach, given the hierarchical nature of the data by countries and the degree or urbanization. The results confirm that the well-known rural happiness paradox holds in the case of Europe and that variables related to social capital play an important role. In addition, social capital is seen to be configured differently for urban and rural areas and variables related thereto are shown to gain more importance in the rural environment.

ABSTRACT. Investigating how the place where we live affects our well-being has long been a subject of study in different fields, such as geography, urban and cultural studies, and regional economics. In this sense, there is growing evidence concerning the effect that cultural amenities appear to have in attracting human capital. However, the relationship between the presence of cultural amenities and well-being is still being explored. The presence of amenities is key to understanding quality of life because they make certain places attractive to live and work in, especially when concurring with other places that lack such amenities. According to previous studies, neighborhoods and cities that facilitate access to cultural and other amenities are more likely to have happier populations. A happy place can be achieved by creating accessible services nearby that facilitate mobility and social activity among citizens (Putri 2005). Furthermore, the perception of quality of life depends not only on the quantity and quality of public, private, and natural amenities, but also on the possibilities for spatial interactions between individuals. Based on the above, the main aim of this paper is to study the role that amenities in general – and cultural amenities in particular– together with social capital, play in the quality of life of European citizens. To this end, this paper follows the line of work by Biagi, Ladu, and Meleddu (2018), who apply the capabilities approach proposed by Sen (1993). In this approach, residents' perceptions of quality of life depend on personal characteristics, the presence of amenities (including cultural amenities), and social relations. The case study involves the EU-28 countries, and we use data from the 2016 European Quality of Life Survey and differentiate between whether individuals reside in rural or urban areas. Happiness is modelled using a multilevel structural equations model (GSEM) in three levels (individual, regional, and country) to study what role social capital and amenities play in Europeans' happiness, controlling for the effect of factors such as gender, unemployment, age, low income, higher education, and living with a partner. Using traditional structural equation modeling as a starting point, the notion of amenities is measured as access to services such as banking, public transport and shopping facilities, among others. In addition, other indicators linked to cultural capital, both immaterial, such as religiosity, as well as material cultural and leisure amenities, as access to a cinema, theater, or cultural center, participation in sporting activities, access to green recreational areas, participation and membership in educational, cultural and sporting associations, are incorporated into the model. Social capital is assessed as a multidimensional concept by means of a latent class model concept composed of institutional trust, social trust, social ties as well as voluntary association and sense of belonging.

ABSTRACT. Backgrounds and purposes: The purpose of this study was to investigate the association of emotional labor, organizational climate, personality trait, work/family imbalance with quality of life in Korean service workers. Methods: A total of 5,000 service employers who were working at least 1 hour a day from a nationwide sample were analyzed. Emotional labor (‘emotional regulation’:2 items, ‘emotional dissonance’:3 items, ‘organizational monitoring’: 2 items and ‘organizational protective system for emotional labor’: 4 items), organizational climate (5 items), personality trait (10 items), work/family imbalance (5 items), and quality of life (4 items) were measured using a self-administered questionnaire. The multiple linear regression analysis was conducted after controlling for socio-demographic and job characteristics. Results: The results show that while three sub-factors of emotional labor (emotional dissonance, t=-5.553, p=.000; organizational monitoring, t=-3,385, p=.001; organizational protective system for emotional labor, t=-7.401, p=.000), Type A Personality trait (t=-9.253, p=.000) and work/family imbalance (t=-15.151, p=.000) were negatively related to quality of life, organizational climate (t=12.497, p=.000) (F=156.276, p=.000, R2=.255) was positively related to quality of life after adjustment for sex, age, monthly income, and working duration. Conclusion: These results indicate that service workers’ emotional labor during performing their duties might contribute to decreased quality of life. In addition, people who have type A personality and work/family imbalance were less likely to feel a good quality of life. However, a positive and cooperative organizational climate might improve the service workers’ quality of life.

ABSTRACT. Decent living standards (DLS) are a set of universal and essential material conditions for achieving basic human well-being and inclusive sustainable development (Rao & Min, Social Indicators Research 138, 2018). The standards include physical (shelter, health, and nutrition) and social (socialization, education, and mobility) well-being at individual and household/community level. By focusing on material prerequisites for the fulfillment of basic needs, the DLS concept complements existing multidimensional well-being and poverty indicators comprehensively addressing living conditions and means of social participation. Here, we study living standards worldwide using Demographic and Health Survey (DHS) microdata from 76 low- and middle-income countries. Our data are based on the answers of million respondents collected in 240 DHS surveys over a 30-year period from 1990 to 2019. The data are fully georeferenced allowing us to gain a detailed picture of living conditions in different parts of the world. Distinguishing ten central need dimensions, we analyze spatial patterns in the distribution of living standards globally and the socioeconomic drivers of human well-being. In our analysis, we find major well-being differences between and within countries. While rural households are more deprived on average, the high-resolution data reveal nuanced spatial patterns. Even in areas with an overall high achievement of living standards, access to basic services is restricted for some households, highlighting the importance of looking beyond averages when assessing population needs and inequalities. Over time, living standards have improved globally, but with considerable differences across world regions. The considered DLS dimensions are strongly correlated, showing elevated levels of multidimensional poverty and deprivation in some areas. In particular, we find that poor housing conditions are often related to reduced thermal comfort, limited access to sanitation, and challenges with the preparation of food. The findings of this study have important policy implications and provide effective guidance in channeling efforts to those populations in greatest need and help addressing decent living gaps and inequalities worldwide.

ABSTRACT. Many measures of well-being and quality of life have been developed and validated for Western contexts. However, these measures are not necessarily valid for non-Western contexts. The aim of this study was to investigate the factorial validity of the Setswana translation of the Affectometer-2 (AFM-2-S). The AFM-2 measures an individual’s general happiness or sense of well-being using 10 positive affect [PA] and 10 negative affect [NA] statements). The sample was a Setswana speaking older adult group in South Africa (n = 400; male = 29%, female = 70.5%, not indicated = 0.05%; mean age = 61.57, SD = 8.87). A research committee approach was used for the translation into Setswana. Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) and exploratory structural equation modelling (ESEM) were applied to the data. The two-factor ESEM model best fitted the AFM-2-S, but model fit was inadequate. After removal of problematic scale items, acceptable model fit was obtained. The AFM-2-S shows potential for use in the current sample, provided that problematic scale items are removed. Although previous research validated the AFM-2 in a South African context, this study is the first to apply the more recently developed ESEM model to data from an older adult sample. In line with a people-first economy, future research could focus on validating the AFM-2 for other Western and non-Western samples globally in local languages. The AFM-2 may need to be adapted for different populations. Alternatively other scales, or new measures that are developed using a bottom-up approach, could be used.

ABSTRACT. Social trust has been consistently positively associated with life satisfaction and economic performance in the literature. While there is some research investigating the transmission of social norms across cultures, this has yet to be done in a controlled experimental setting. Therefore, how does working or living in the same environment change social norms of people coming from different cultures? Germans have, according to experimental and observational studies, much higher levels of social trust than the French. Half of Luxembourg’s population is composed of expatriates – to which almost 200,000 cross-border commuters are added every day. While French immigrants are four times more present than Germans, both countries have the greatest presence of cross-border workers in Luxembourg, making it the perfect “mixing bowl” to observe how the interaction between these two groups changes their original social norms. The aim of this study is to investigate how working or living in Luxembourg changes French and Germans migrants’ and cross-border workers’ social norms, particularly relating to trust. Following Willinger et al. (2003), we intend to answer this research question through a laboratory experiment – precisely, an investment game. This experimental setting allows for a precise measure of trust, reciprocity, and performance. The key features of the study are two; first, we focus on three samples: one in Luxembourg, one in Metz, and another in Trier – both cities have a similar distance to Luxembourg City (around 50 to 60 km) and a similar distance to the French-German border (around 40 to 50 km). Second, we consider five treatments in total, three of them defining general levels of trust in the three countries (FF, GG, LL) and two of them targeting migrants and cross-border workers in Luxembourg (LfLf, LgLg). More than 20 years later and in different cities, we expect to find again the Franco-German gap in trust and performance levels. Moreover, we expect the Luxembourgish to present trust and performance levels between those from France and Germany. Particularly, we expect the French in the Luxembourgish sample to trust more than their counterparts in the French sample, and the Germans in the Luxembourgish sample to trust less than their counterparts in the German sample, with performance following accordingly. This result would support our main hypothesis that interacting makes people more alike (i.e., the French begin to trust more and the Germans to trust less). Luxembourg’s internationality and diversity is advanced as the main mechanism behind this expected convergence. Results won’t be available before the conference, but the whole experimental design will be presented, including details on how we’ve solved issues such as the potential self-selection of migrants and cross-border workers.

ABSTRACT. INTRODUCTION. Current approaches to disability emphasize the importance of providing individualized supports in community settings, which can improve the Quality of Life (QoL) of people with disabilities. These approaches focus on participation and inclusion of these people in the community, throughout their lives. Therefore, this perspective requires promoting inclusive education to ensure participation and inclusion from an early age. Assessing Quality of Life-related personal outcomes of students with disabilities is a key element to guide educational practices and policies for their well-being and inclusion. This type of evaluation is based on indicators that are sensitive to the personal and contextual characteristics of the target population. The available QoL assessment tools in the Spanish educational context have limitations for the application to students with disabilities in mainstream schools. To address this gap, a research project was conducted to develop the QoL Index for Primary Education for students with learning, emotional and behavioral disabilities in general education. The items of the QoL Index are based on the principles of QoL Model (Schalock & Verdugo, 2002), which has been recently merged with the Support Paradigm in the QoL Supports Model (Gómez et al., 2021; Verdugo et al., 2021). AIM. The objective of this work is to present the main steps in the construction and implementation of this tool. METHODS. A Delphi study was carried out in order to develop the field test version of the Index through the agreement of 14 experts in inclusive education and disabilities. At a later stage, the field test version has been implemented through a pilot study in which 67 students have been assessed. OUTCOMES. The results have provided evidence of the psychometric properties of the items. The pilot study has also evidenced some barriers and facilitators in the assessment of students' personal outcomes. DISCUSSION. The results obtained allowed the selection of items to design the final version of the Index. A properly calibrated instrument of this nature can enhance the planning of supports aimed at improving the personal QoL of students with disabilities in inclusive settings. Furthermore, the barriers and facilitators experienced in the implementation of the field test version suggest the potential interference of contextual factors in the process of QoL assessment aimed at guiding educational practices and policies for their well-being and inclusion.

ABSTRACT. This research group will present three posters detailing aspects of the research project on college students' well-being and happiness. The first will review prior case studies and literature on the topic of college students, predominately youth aged 18 to 24 years old, well-being and happiness measures. The second poster will focus on data collected by the Happiness Index, a large on-going online survey of metrics for well-being and happiness. These data focus on college-aged students. The third poster presents data analysis of the survey conducted by this research group of young adults in high research activity institutions in the U.S. with the aim of identifying primarily social and economic factors that contribute to well-being. This will be done in the context of peer-to-peer interactions. Factors considered across the three posters, and the research project, include financial security, sense of belonging and other environmental factors. It is hoped that this research will aid universities in better understanding well-being of their students.

ABSTRACT. In cities all around the world, walkability has grown in importance as an element of urban planning and quality of life. In Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, where there is a large concentration of cars and little infrastructure for pedestrians, there is an increasing desire to promote walkability as a way to improve quality of life for locals. This abstract examines the idea of walkability and how it may be used to gauge Jeddah's quality of life. An overview of the idea of walkability, including its definition and essential elements, is given in the first section of this abstract. The term "walkability" describes how well a neighbourhood is suited for walking, and it takes into account a variety of elements including sidewalk construction, street connection, and land use. According to research, livable neighbourhoods are linked to a number of advantageous effects, such as greater physical activity, better mental health, and lessened traffic. The second section of the abstract looks at Jeddah's existing walkability and highlights a number of issues that need to be resolved in order to encourage pedestrian activity. These difficulties include a lack of pedestrian-oriented land use, a lack of sidewalk infrastructure, and high traffic speeds. Despite these obstacles, a number of projects are being undertaken to increase Jeddah's walkability, including the building of additional pavements and the adoption of traffic calming measures. The abstract's final section investigates Jeddah's walkability as a potential indicator of quality of life. By encouraging walkability, Jeddah has the potential to enhance the health and wellbeing of its citizens and lessen the negative environmental effects of a reliance on cars. Additionally, increasing walkability can result in more lively, inclusive public areas that encourage social interaction and community involvement. Prioritising walkability as a quality of life indicator can help to ensure that Jeddah remains livable and sustainable for future generations as the city continues to grow and become more urbanised. In Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, walkability is a crucial component of urban planning and quality of life. The city can improve its citizens' health, well-being, and social connections as well as environmental sustainability by addressing the issues related to pedestrian activity and increasing walkability. According to this abstract, Jeddah must prioritise walkability as a quality of life indicator if it is to remain a livable city with a diverse and inclusive population over the long term.

ABSTRACT. Positive psychology interventions aim towards thriving and India ranked 136th on the world happiness index. The dominant discourse focuses on long term intervention towards building wellbeing however brief positive psychology interventions in Indian context remain largely unexplored. The present study aimed at investigating the efficacy of a one-week strengths-based intervention on enhancing wellbeing among students. For this purpose pre post quasi experimental design was used with a sample of 92 adolescents in different cities of India. Character strengths was measured through VIA character strengths inventory (McGrath, 2019) and wellbeing was measured using Life satisfaction scale and SPANE (Diener, Wirtz, Tov, Kim-Prieto, Choi, Oishi, & Biswas-Diener, 2009). The questionnaires were administered at baseline and immediately after the end of the intervention. Results reveal that there was a significant increase in life satisfaction and positive affect and, a decrease in negative affect. The brief nature of the intervention makes it suitable to be used in educational institutions for enhancing the wellbeing of students.

ABSTRACT. Background: The Happy-Productive Worker Thesis holds that the happiness of workers has a positive impact on their performance at work. In consequence, more and more workplace wellness programs have been implemented with the aim of promoting labor productivity. Objectives: We seek to answer the following questions: 1) Does happiness really add to work performance? If so, how strong is the effect? How long lasting is it? 2) Does the effect of happiness on work performance differ across occupations? If so, which kind of occupation benefits the most from happiness? Does happiness produce the same effect strength to public sector and to private sector? 3) Which component of happiness adds most to work performance, how well one feels most of the time (affective component) or the degree to which one perceives to get what one wants from life (cognitive component)? Method: We took stock of research findings on effect on productivity of happiness in the sense of life-satisfaction available in the World Database of Happiness. We considered 34 studies which together yielded 73 findings and 197 statistical correlations over 26 countries and regions. Results: Together, the findings provide strong evidence of a positive relationship between happiness and work performance. 1) Longitudinal studies suggest a positive effect of happiness on work performance with respect to supervisor rating of work performance, turnover and national productivity. Average effect sizes of longitudinal zero-correlations range from +0.21 to +0.38. The causal effect remains unclear for absenteeism. The effect of happiness on performance at work is permanent. 2) The contribution of happiness to performance differs across occupations, managers and directors benefit the most from happiness. Performance in public sector is more considerably associated with happiness than in private sector, but we fail to infer the causality. 3) Productivity at work depends more on the affective component of happiness (how well one feels most of the time) than on the cognitive component of happiness (perceived realization of wants).

ABSTRACT. Positive thinking’s effect on problem-solving poses a puzzle. Some studies show that positivity facilitates problem-solving, whereas others show the opposite. In two pre-registered studies, we investigate how encouragement to think positively influence task execution (i.e., performance and effort) and if positivity entails negative consequences (i.e., mental fatigue and self-esteem). Participants were either encouraged to think positively (experimental group) or to focus on the task (control group), before carrying out a word-search puzzle (Study 1) or solving math problems (Study 2). We hypothesized that participants in the positive group would show impeded performance and reduced effort compared with the control group, but found the opposite. In both studies, the positive group performed better than the control group on the problem-solving tasks. Furthermore, we did not find support for our hypothesis that positivity would come at the expense of negative consequences. Possible interpretations of the results are discussed. We conclude that positivity facilitates problem-solving, at least in non-complex problems, and that follow-up studies should investigate complex problem-solving to further advance the knowledge.

ABSTRACT. Social media generate data on human behaviour at large scales and over long periods of time, posing a complementary approach to traditional methods in the social sciences. Millions of texts from social media can be processed with computational methods to study emotions over time and across regions. However, recent research has shown weak correlations between social media emotions and affect questionnaires at the individual level and between static regional aggregates of social media emotion and subjective well-being at the population level , questioning the validity of social media data to study emotions. Yet, to date, no research has tested the validity of social media emotion macroscopes to track the temporal evolution of emotions at the level of a whole society. Here we present a pre-registered prediction study that shows how gender-rescaled time series of Twitter emotional expression at the national level substantially correlate with aggregates of self-reported emotions in a weekly representative survey in the United Kingdom. A follow-up exploratory analysis shows a high prevalence of third-person references in emotionally-charged tweets, suggesting that social media data provide a way of social sensing the emotions of others rather than just the emotional experiences of users. These results show that, despite the issues that social media have in terms of representativeness and algorithmic confounding, the combination of advanced text analysis methods with user demographic information in social media emotion macroscopes can provide measures that are informative of the general population beyond social media users.

ABSTRACT. Satisfaction with life is considered a stable factor of subjective well-being and consists of the cognitive assessment that individulas make of their lives in terms of various areas. In terms of adolescents’ life satisfaction, research suggests that it tends to increase when they derive satisfaction from their leisure activities, which in turn contributes to psychological well-being and stress reduction. The objective of this work was to examine the relationship established between life satisfaction in adolescence and different leisure and free time activities that adolescents practice. The sample included 269 Spanish adolescents, who had an age range of 14 to 18 years and were in the third and fourth years of Compulsory Secondary Education. Of this sample, 50.2% (n = 135) were girls and 46.8% (n = 126) were boys. The instrument used to measure satisfaction with life was The Satisfaction With Life Scale (SWLS; Diener et al., 1985), while leisure and free time activities were evaluated with a questionnaire that was specifically developed for this research. The results obtained indicated that there is a positive and significant correlation between satisfaction with life and certain leisure and free time activities undertaken by adolescents, particularly in relation to physical sports activities directed by a monitor and doing homework.

ABSTRACT. Background: The grandparent role is central to the model of family intergenerational solidarity, and child care provided by grandparents has been identified as a particularly important form of multigenerational family support in Taiwan. A Taiwanese saying runs that “Grandmas take care of grandkids; pigs eat hogwash.” It describes that grandparents (especially grandmas) take care of grandchildren is a matter of course. Recently, increases in life expectancy and the changing role of women in the workforce have led to a greater demand for the provision of childcare by grandparents. However, little is known on older adults’ perception of the grandparents roles. The impacts of caring for grandchildren on the well-being of grandparents and whether there are gender differences remain ambiguous.

Objectives: The purpose of this study were to (1) explore older adults’ perceptions of the grandparents roles, (2)analyze the association among the older adults’ perception of the grandparents roles, grandchild care provision and life satisfaction with a particular focus on gender differentials.

Method : Data were taken from the 2021 Taiwan Social Change Survey. The Family Module consisted of an island-wide sample of 1,573 adults aged 18 years old and above who were randomly chosen using a multi-stage stratified sampling method and interviews. Only subjects with at least one grandchild were included (N = 380, mean age = 70.25 years). Multivariate linear regression analyses were performed to assess individual factors, grandparents’ roles perception, grandchild care provision and older adults’ life satisfaction.

Results: Most older adults held positive attitudes toward grandparental involvement. Respondents reported higher levels of agreement with their role in grandchild care and an important source of informal support to adult children and grandchild. There was no significant gender difference. Although more grandmothers (22.6%) provided child care, it was found that grandfathers (20.5%) also made a significant contribution. Providing childcare intensity was associated with grandparents’ perceived well-being varied by gender. The more grandmothers identify with the role of grandparents, the less time they take care of their grandchildren, and the longer their spouse takes care of their grandchildren, the better their life satisfaction. Among grandfathers, the less identify with grandparents role, the more time they take care of their grandchildren, the better their life satisfaction.

Conclusion: Overall, traditional beliefs and value systems have shaped the Taiwanese older adults’ perceptions of grandparents roles means. Our results show gender differences in the impact of grandchild care on grandparent well-being. Although intensive grandchild care may be detrimental to the well-being of grandparents, older adults’ perceptions of the grandparents roles moderate the effects on well-being. These findings suggest that grandparent caregivers on well-being vary by sociocultural contexts. This study concludes with some discussion and suggestions for policy.

ABSTRACT. Objectives: This study adopted the International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health (ICF) framework to explore longitudinal influences of environment profiles and transitions in social participation (SP) patterns on quality of life (QOL) of disabled older adults. Methods: Data were collected from a sample of community-dwelling older adults in Taiwan in 2018 (T1; N=1,314) and a follow-up survey in 2020 (T2; N=831). Latent class analysis and latent transition analysis were conducted to obtain environment and SP profiles, and the probabilities of changes in SP latent class membership between waves. Multilevel modeling was carried out to explicate the hypothesized associations. Results: 1.Three unique environment profiles, labeled as Highly- (Highly-FE), Moderately- (Moderately-FE) and Weakly-Facilitative Environment (Weakly-FE), were identified from T1 data. 2.The three SP classes that were obtained from T1 and T2 data denoted High-, Moderate- and Low-SP. 3.Over 50% of the sample remained at their primary SP status and over 20% of the older individuals had increased probability of engagement in SP-related activities between waves. 4.Participants in the “Highly-FE” and “Moderately-FE” classes were more likely to belong or remain in the “High-SP” subgroup and exhibited significantly better QOL. The associations were confirmed both cross-sectionally and longitudinally. Conclusion: The heterogeneity of disabled older people should be recognized as manifested in their membership in diverse SP class and varied activity transition patterns. Also, preventive interventions should be developed to promote or maintain preferred meaningful SP in various areas of life to optimize current and future QOL. Lastly, perceived environmental barriers and SP status can be used as a screening tool for current and future mental well-being and QOL. Disabled older persons who reside in an environment with more barriers, such as poorly designed and laid out buildings, poor accessibility of public transportation or health care services, or strong discrimination against older and disabled populations, and who exhibit low engagement in SP-related activities are particularly vulnerable to DSs and deteriorating QOL both now and two years in the future.

ABSTRACT. Background: “Aging in place” (AIP) has long been a popular and desirable goal in gerontology. It is assumed that AIP can largely benefit the quality of life (QOL) of older adults. AIP contains three elements: being safe at home, maintaining autonomy, and staying in an aging-friendly community. However, most existing studies only focus on certain aspects of AIP, rather than comprehensively incorporating all the three elements into the analysis. Furthermore, little is known about how continuity of daily life potentially affects older adults’ QOL. Integrating the Environmental Press Theory and the Continuity Theory, this study evaluates how the three AIP elements and external continuity of daily life, defined as stability of personal relationship, activity continuity, and interpersonal familiarity, are associated with the QOL of community-dwelling older adults. Methods: A total of 253 adults aged 60 and above who resided in Taipei city were recruited from January to March 2021. A structured questionnaire was done by either paper-and-pencil or an online survey. Path analysis was performed using SPSS AMOS to explore the hypothesized relationships. Results: 1.Home safety, autonomy and perceived community friendliness were all positively related to QOL. Among the three AIP elements, autonomy exerted the highest direct effect on QOL. 2.Stability of personal relationship and activity continuity not only were positively related to QOL, but also mediated the associations between autonomy and QOL as well as between perceived community friendliness and QOL. 3.Autonomy also exhibited the highest indirect effect on QOL in the three AIP elements. That is, in all relationships studied, high autonomy contributed to high personal relationship stability and high activity continuity, which in turn, linked to high QOL. 4.A combination of the three AIP elements and the three types of external continuity of daily life accounted for 64.9% of the variability in QOL and also yielded a satisfactory model fit to the data. Conclusion: This study suggested that professionals serving older persons should evaluate their home safety, autonomy and community friendliness. In the meantime, special attention should be paid to their external continuity, including keeping long-term relationship with local community and preserving their own daily routines. Through supporting AIP and external continuity, the QOL of city dwelling older adults can be optimized and enhanced.

ABSTRACT. The existence of children can change an individual's life and also affect their happiness. It is commonly believed that children improve their parents' happiness. However, this may not be true for all parents. Blanchflower & Clark (2021) showed that young children provide happiness to their parents, but as children get older, their presence can threaten their parents' happiness. Since burnout is one of the most threatening obstacles to well-being at work, this study examined the effect of children's presence on working parents' burnout. More specifically, the present study examined the effect of children's presence on the burnout experienced by working parents and whether these effects varied depending on the parent's age. The burnout of 772 workers was measured along with their demographic characteristics, including gender, age group, child status, and marital status. As the participants were nested in each company, a multi-level analysis was used. As a result, it was found that the burnout of participants with children was higher than that of participants without children. Moreover, middle-aged participants experienced a higher level of burnout than parents in other age groups (i.e., in their 20s and 30s). More importantly, the results showed that the interaction effect between child status and age is statistically significant. Employees in their 20s and 30s with children reported a higher level of burnout than those without children. Meanwhile, employees in their 40s and older reported a decrease in burnout when having children compared to when they did not have children. However, there is a limitation in interpreting these results because the ages of the children were not directly measured. Nevertheless, the study suggests implications for burnout experienced by employees: Although organizations must make an effort to ease the burnout of their middle-aged employees, it is also necessary that employees improve their relationships with family members, especially their children.

ABSTRACT. Survey data has traditionally been the primary source for determining people's happiness. However, people suffer from 'survey fatigue' in a post-pandemic era. Additionally, administering surveys is costly and provides us with data after significant time lags. Big Data collected from, for example, social media platforms and Google serve as a complementary and necessary tool to survey data in order to provide policymakers with the most up-to-date information on people's happiness. This is increasingly important since we face a worsening geopolitical climate and uncertainty regarding when the world will face the next pandemic. Therefore, this paper provides various parties with an abridged version of the information on Big Data and its applicability to happiness research and sets out the future avenues for interested scholars.

This paper will be presented in the Encyclopedia of Happiness, Quality of Life, and Subjective Well-Being special session organised by Roger and Hilke.

ABSTRACT. QUESTION: Is life getting worse as all the bad news in public media suggests and what a lot of people believe?

APPROACH: We assessed changes in average happiness in nations over the last decade. Happiness was conceptualized as the subjective enjoyment of one’s life-as-a-whole, which can be measured using self-reports.

METHOD: We took stock of responses to questions on happiness in representative surveys of the general population in nations, drawing on findings gathered in the World Database of Happiness. We limited to time series that cover at least 20 years and 10 data-points, which yields 200 time series in 72 nations over the years 1946-2021. For only 1 nation (the USA) we have data on this entire period, most of the time series start in the 1990s or 2000. We focussed on change up to and including 2019, that is before the onset of the COVID 19 pandemic in the year 2000.

RESULTS: Average happiness rose significantly in 26 nations and declined in 11 nations: so twice more rise than decline. No significant change in average happiness took place in 35 nations.

DISCUSSION: Reasons for the difference between belief and reality are explored, among which media bias.

CONCLUSION: Life did not get worse in the last decade; at least not in the most of the 72 nations on which trend data on happiness are available. Decline of average happiness was an exception rather than the rule.

ABSTRACT. This panel convenes Dr. Daniel Shek (Editor-in-Chief, ARQOL), Esther Otten (ARQOL publisher, Springer Nature), and Heidi McGowan (former Managing Associate Editor, World Development) to discuss the manuscript preparation, submission, peer-review, and publication processes. Dr. Shek and Ms. Otten will bring their years of experience at ARQOL to introduce the journal, address its remit and workflow, and describe how to improve articles, whereas Heidi will provide a more general editor's perspective. Questions from the audience are welcome and encouraged [note: we can even pre-solicit them to get a sense of what topics attendees would like covered]!

ABSTRACT. The field of community development and numerous fields connected to ISQOLS (i.e., quality of life, happiness, and well-being) have much to learn from each other (Talmage, 2020). The foundational work of champions like Rhonda Phillips, Seung Jong Lee, and Yunji Kim (2015a; 2015b) around well-being and interdisciplinary collaborations that connect across these fields are beginning to burgeon. More opportunities exist at ISQOLS and similar conferences to highlight and question commonalities and differences across specific disciplines, specifically regarding community needs, assets, desires, and attitudes, among other interrelated phenomenon. Such collaborative work not only advances theory, but also enhances policy, education, and practice.

This presentation is hosted by the editors of Community Development by Taylor and Francis. ISQOLS attendees and members will learn about publishing opportunities with the journal that align with their respective work. This presentation particularly fits with the Rhonda G. Phillips Endowed Track for the Promotion of Community Development and Community Well-Being, emphasizing the intersections of both areas. To date, over one thousand articles in Community Development have focused on well-being. These articles span intersecting topics such as: (1) Social capital and psychological social capital; (2) Community satisfaction; (3) Community health; (4) Governance and public affairs/services; (5) Sustainable development and livability; (6) Economic development and entrepreneurship; and (7) Community and civic engagement. The journal welcomes many more such articles, and during this session the editors will offer strategies and insights to increase the likelihood that relevant submissions are positively reviewed and perceived as good fits for the journal.

ABSTRACT. Meet the president (Martijn Burger), executive director (Jill Johnson) and board members of ISQOLS during this walk-in and ask them any question you could imagine regarding ISQOLS. Also new ideas to further develop the society are welcome.

ABSTRACT. This one hour workshop will provide a detailed overview of small but mighty non-profit on the east coast of Canada that is leading the movement to center wellbeing as a primary indicator of societal progress. Engage Nova Scotia’s research & data lead and software developer, both PhD candidates, will introduce the Nova Scotia Quality of Life Initiative. The focus will be on the 2019 NS Quality of Life Survey (the largest non-government wellbeing dataset that exists in North America) and our plans to re-survey in 2024. The conversation is framed as a three-part recipe for informing policy in a regional well-being survey and will include how intersectoral collaboration increases and strengthens data use and knowledge mobilization; demo three years of mobilizing knowledge from wellbeing data using custom built data visualization tools and machine learning; and our lessons learned, or what you need to know before launching a wellbeing initiative.

ABSTRACT. Empirical evidence suggests that achieving sustainability requires reducing economic growth, not just greening it. This conclusion often leads to ecological pessimism, based on two beliefs. The first is human tendency to unlimited expansion; the second is that limiting growth is politically unfeasible because of lack of consensus. We challenge both beliefs. The decline of fertility and per-capita income growth provide reasons to expect decreasing human pressure on ecosystems over the long run. Moreover, the lack of a clear alternative to growth as a means to increase well-being is the main reason why policies to limit growth have never gathered wide consensus. We propose such an alternative by drawing on a large literature on subjective well-being and social capital. Specifically, we argue that policies for social capital can decouple well-being from economic growth. Indeed, the crisis of social capital experienced by much of the world's population is a root cause of the current unsustainable growth of the world economy. Declining social capital feeds economic growth, because people seek economic affluence to compensate for the emotional distress and collective disempowerment caused by poor social capital. We propose policies that, by promoting social capital, would expand well-being, and shift the economy onto a more sustainable path characterized by slower economic growth. Such proposals are more politically viable than the current agenda of limits to growth, and can reconcile sustainability and well-being.

ABSTRACT. Neo-humanism is a cultural movement to prioritize people over markets by re-orienting social and economic activities. Research on subjective well-being provides valuable insights to promote sustainable development in modern societies, a target that has proved to be elusive so far. Neo-humanism offers a unifying narrative and indicates that it is possible to decouple consumption from subjective well-being, creating conditions for socially and environmentally sustainable high-quality lives. On one hand, evidence suggests that it is possible to promote a virtuous cycle in which investing in subjective well-being, through policies for social relations, reduces the need to consume and supports collective action, which is necessary to protect the environment and to improve subjective well-being. Higher well-being, on the other hand, contributes to efficiency gains that can be used to reduce working time, and to decouple income (and consumption) from subjective well-being. This decoupling will contribute to high quality of life, and to a socially and environmentally compatible economy; an economy that is driven by creativity not conspicuous consumption. Neo-humanism calls for a new definition of progress, such as one that reflects societies' ability to transform resources into high quality of life. Neo-humanism does not argue for de-growth but refutes the agenda of growth at any cost. The evidence suggests that economic growth is compatible with subjective well-being growth only under certain conditions, such as full employment, generous social safety nets, strong social relations, and limited income inequality. Under these conditions, the economy might grow slowly, but slow or near-zero economic growth could actually signal systems that better support quality of life.

ABSTRACT. This talk will explore the Wellbeing Economy movement and how organizations, governments, academics and changemakers around the world are coming together to redesign our economy so that it works in service of people and planet. It will begin with a short exploration of the history of economic thought to understand how mainstream economics came to rationalize an inherently unjust and unsustainable system before diving into the exciting paradigm shift happening around the world in terms of the role, scope and purpose of the economy. This lecture will showcase the Wellbeing Economy movement sweeping the globe and how governments and communities are working to redefine progress so that our economies are evaluated not by their level of growth but by their contribution to our social and ecological wellbeing. The major aim of this keynote will be to illustrate, in a time of doomerism and dispair, that a different economic system is not only possible but already underway.

ABSTRACT. In this roundtable discussion, four panelists will lead one policy topic with moderation by Mariano Rojas (Universidad Internacional de La Rioja).

Panelists and topics include: (1) Francesco Sarracino (STATEC Research) – challenges with economic growth as a measure of progress; (2) Amanda Janoo (Wellbeing Economy Alliance) – policies to improve non-economic qualities of life and well-being; (3) Lina Martinez (Universidad Icesi) – well-being policies for low-income countries; and (4) Mark Fabian (University of Warwick) – the implications of rising political polarization and distrust for well-being policies.

The panel is structured as a conversation emphasizing the exchange of ideas. Following each topic-leader, there will be a designated, second, panelist and then short comments from the others.

ABSTRACT. This special session focusses on how governments and public organisations can integrate subjective wellbeing into their policy appraisal and decision-making processes.

The session will draw on lessons from a project that Pier Labs recently completed with Build Nova Scotia (formerly Develop Nova Scotia), an organisation devoted to developing placemaking initiatives to increase population growth, investment and economic grow across the province. Pier Labs worked with the organisation to develop and test a Subjective Wellbeing Appraisal Framework. The framework uses subjective wellbeing to evaluate the impact of placemaking initiatives. It thus provides the organisation with a complement to traditional economic measures to quantify the impact to policymakers and the public. This was particularly relevant for an organisation focusing on investment in placemaking initiatives which create a multitude of non-market outcomes, including community cohesion, education, improved environmental quality, among others. This session will outline the approach, findings and key lessons learned from this project.

Project Approach and Value Proposition

The project focused on developing a Wellbeing Framework which is methodologically robust; grounded in the extensive evidence from the quality of life and subjective wellbeing literature. It was also designed to be practical, providing for ease of data collection and communication to a breadth of audiences. To ensure that the framework met all of these objectives, the research included a testing and refinement phase, in which the framework was used to evaluate the impact of four placemaking initiatives as ‘test cases’. This enabled testing and refinement of the framework, as well as the collection and valuation of four key placemaking initiatives. This was supported by a baseline and comparison with the Engage Nova Scotia 2019 Quality of Life dataset.

Lessons Learned and Key Considerations

This session will focus on the lessons learned and key considerations for utilising wellbeing to value placemaking initiates in a public policy context, and the communications of the findings of the framework to create sustainable change. This will include a lessons learned on how to evaluate ‘success’ in the changes of subjective wellbeing (I,e. movement across an entire population or those at the margins), communicating the robustness of wellbeing metrics to an audience familiar with traditional economic measures, among a range of other insights gleaned through this applied research. It has laid the groundwork for the utilisation of wellbeing metrics not only for Build Nova Scotia, but for other organisations in the public sector.

ABSTRACT. Join us for a meet and greet with Journal of Happiness Studies (JoHS) editors David Bartram, Stephanie Rossouw, Talita Greyling, Martijn Hendriks, Clemens Hetschko, and Kelsey O’Connor. The editors will discuss the publication process at JoHS and common limitations in submissions. During the session the audience can ask questions about the editorial process and more.

ABSTRACT. Professor Barbara Fredrickson has investigated the nature of positive emotions for more than three decades. In this virtual keynote she will share her foundational Broaden-and-Build Theory of positive emotions as a backdrop for her latest thinking and evidence on the value of those positive emotions that individuals co-experience with others in day-to-day positive connections. Mental health and resilience grows stronger through these shared moments of emotional uplift - they help individuals to bounce back to wellbeing from illbeing. Moments of positivity resonance within close relationships predict trajectories of chronic illness and longevity. Character virtues also grow stronger: When people connect over positivity they gain greater appreciations for oneness, altruism, and humility, benefits that stand to benefit whole communities. Dr. Fredrickson will highlight the evidence that support these conclusions and also describe a simple "micro-intervention" that anyone can use to increase positive connections to reap the associated quality of life benefits.