Experiential measures of subjective well-being are often proposed as alternatives to global self-reports, alternatives that address many threats to validity that global reports have. However, experiential measures may have their own problems that go overlooked because their face validity is so high. In this post, I discuss some of the concerns I have about these measures.
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The limitations of global, self-report measures of happiness are obvious. But sometimes, researchers fail to ask whether the alternative measures that have been proposed to address these limitations come with their own psychometric challenges. In this post, I describe a recent paper that compares two experiential measures of well-being: the Day Reconstruction Method and the Experience Sampling Method. This comparison raises some concerns about experiential approaches.
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Author's picture

Rich Lucas

Personality psychologist in the Department of Psychology at Michigan State University. Interested in personality and well-being, measurement, and replicability.

Professor

United States