Measuring Experiential Well-Being among Older Adults

Area of Science:

• Psychology
• Gerontology
• Sociology

Background:

• Subjective well-being (SWB) research traditionally focuses on life satisfaction evaluations.
• Experiential well-being measures capture immediate affective experiences, offering a distinct perspective.
• Advances enable large-scale studies of experiential well-being, but brief measures' psychometrics are unclear.

Purpose of the Study:

• To evaluate the psychometric properties of brief experiential well-being measures.
• To compare the factor structure and criterion correlations of detailed time-diary versus brief daily-review methods.
• To assess the utility of a single index versus multiple subscales for summarizing affective experiences.

Main Methods:

• Analysis of experienced well-being data from two Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) supplements.
• Supplement 1: Detailed time diary data capturing affective reactions.
• Supplement 2: Brief review of the prior day's affective experiences.

Main Results:

• A single index effectively summarizes affective experiences from detailed time diaries.
• Two or more subscales are more appropriate for capturing the structure of brief daily-review data.
• Both methods demonstrate distinct age-related properties compared to life satisfaction measures.

Conclusions:

• The choice of measurement method (detailed vs. brief) impacts the optimal way to summarize experiential well-being data.
• Brief experiential measures require careful consideration of their underlying factor structure for accurate interpretation.
• These findings inform the development and application of robust experiential well-being assessments in large-scale surveys.