W. Wilson's (1967) review of the area of subjective well-being (SWB) advanced several conclusions regarding those who report high levels of "happiness". A number of his conclusions have been overturned: youth and modest aspirations no longer are seen as prerequisites of SWB. E. Diener's (1984) review placed greater emphasis on theories that stressed psychological factors. In the current article, the authors review current evidence for Wilson's conclusions and discuss modern theories of SWB that stress dispositional influences, adaptation, goals, and coping strategies. The next steps in the evolution of the field are to comprehend the interaction of psychological factors with life circumstances in producing SWB, to understand the causal pathways leading to happiness, understand the processes underlying adaptation to events, and develop theories that explain why certain variables differentially influence the different components of SWV (life satisfaction, pleasant affect, and unpleasant affect).

Subjective Well-Being: Three Decades of Progress

CDC definitions for nosocomial infections, 1988

▪ Abstract Socioeconomic status (SES) is one of the most widely studied constructs in the social sciences. Several ways of measuring SES have been proposed, but most include some quantification of family income, parental education, and occupational status. Research shows that SES is associated with a wide array of health, cognitive, and socioemotional outcomes in children, with effects beginning prior to birth and continuing into adulthood. A variety of mechanisms linking SES to child well-being have been proposed, with most involving differences in access to material and social resources or reactions to stress-inducing conditions by both the children themselves and their parents. For children, SES impacts well-being at multiple levels, including both family and neighborhood. Its effects are moderated by children's own characteristics, family characteristics, and external support systems.

Socioeconomic status and child development.

Policy makers view public sector-sponsored employment and training programs and other active labor market policies as tools for integrating the unemployed and economically disadvantaged into the work force. Few public sector programs have received such intensive scrutiny, and been subjected to so many different evaluation strategies. This chapter examines the impacts of active labor market policies, such as job training, job search assistance, and job subsidies, and the methods used to evaluate their effectiveness. Previous evaluations of policies in OECD countries indicate that these programs usually have at best a modest impact on participants’ labor market prospects. But at the same time, they also indicate that there is considerable heterogeneity in the impact of these programs. For some groups, a compelling case can be made that these policies generate high rates of return, while for other groups these policies have had no impact and may have been harmful. Our discussion of the methods used to evaluate these policies has more general interest. We believe that the same issues arise generally in the social sciences and are no easier to address elsewhere. As a result, a major focus of this chapter is on the methodological lessons learned from evaluating these programs. One of the most important of these lessons is that there is no inherent method of choice for conducting program evaluations. The choice between experimental and non-experimental methods or among alternative econometric estimators should be guided by the underlying economic models, the available data, and the questions being addressed. Too much emphasis has been placed on formulating alternative econometric methods for correcting for selection bias and too little given to the quality of the underlying data. Although it is expensive, obtaining better data is the only way to solve the evaluation problem in a convincing way. However, better data are not synonymous with social experiments. © 1999 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.

The Economics and Econometrics of Active Labor Market Programs

This meta-analysis used 9 literature search strategies to examine 137 distinct personality constructs as correlates of subjective well-being (SWB). Personality was found to be equally predictive of life satisfaction, happiness, and positive affect, but significantly less predictive of negative affect. The traits most closely associated with SWB were repressive-defensiveness, trust, emotional stability, locus of control-chance, desire for control, hardiness, positive affectivity, private collective self-esteem, and tension. When personality traits were grouped according to the Big Five factors, Neuroticism was the strongest predictor of life satisfaction, happiness, and negative affect. Positive affect was predicted equally well by Extraversion and Agreeableness. The relative importance of personality for predicting SWB, how personality might influence SWB, and limitations of the present review are discussed.

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The happy personality : A meta-analysis of 137 personality traits and subjective well-being

PART ONE: OVERVIEW The Intellectual Foundations of Social Program Evaluation - William R Shadish Jr and Charles S Reichardt The Development of Evaluation Theory Program Evaluation - Thomas D Cook and William R Shadish Jr The Worldly Science PART TWO: SOCIAL PROGRAMMING Implementation Realities and Evaluation Design - Milbrey Wallin McLaughlin The Political Hand - Martin A Levin and Barbara Ferman Policy Implementation and Youth Employment Programs Implementation Revisited - Thomas J Higgins The Case of Federal Demonstrations Small Wins - Karl E Weick Redefining the Scale of Social Problems Agenda-Setting - Paul J Quirk A Review Essay The Theory and Practice of Participatory Action Research - Muhammad Anisur Rahman PART THREE: KNOWLEDGE USE Who Needs What Social Research for Policy Making? - Charles E Lindblom Why the Compensatory Education Evaluation Was Useful - Laura C Leviton and Robert F Boruch Social Science Research and the Politics of Gun Control - Peter H Rossi and James D Wright Policymakers' Use of Social Science Research - Leonard Saxe Technology Assessment in the US Congress The Job Corps - Joseph S Wholey Congressional Use of Evaluation Findings The Tomato Effect - James S Goodwin and Jean M Goodwin Rejection of Highly Efficacious Therapies The Evaluators' Accomplishment - Robert E Stake PART FOUR: VALUING The Interplay of Science and Values in Assessing and Regulating Environmental Risks - Frances M Lynn Policy Research as Social Science - Laurence Chalip Outflanking the Value Dilemma The Jury Is In - Kit C Wood, Sarah E Peterson, James S DeGracie and James K Zaharis Use of a Modified Legal Model for School Program Evaluation Mediating Science-Intensive Policy Disputes - Connie P Ozawa and Lawrence Susskind Market Justice, Political Justice - Robert E Lane Alternative Systems of Ethics and Their Application to Education and Evaluation - Mary Anne Bunda PART FIVE: KNOWLEDGE CONSTRUCTION On What Scientists Know, and How They Know It - D C Phillips Social Inquiry by and for Earthlings - Lee J Cronbach But is it Rigorous? Trustworthiness and Authenticity in Naturalistic Evaluation - Yvonna S Lincoln and Egon G Guba Research as Praxis - Patti Lather Postpositivist Critical Multiplism - Thomas D Cook Trends in the Logic of Policy Inquiry - Rita Mae Kelly A Comparison of Approaches and a Commentary PART SIX: EVALUATION PRACTICE The Evolution of the Policy Sciences - William Ascher Understanding the Rise and Avoiding the Fall Sources of Evaluation Practice - William R Shadish Jr Needs, Purposes, Questions, and Technology Matching Patients with Treatments - John W Finney and Rudolf H Moos Conceptual and Methodological Issues Combining Ethnographic and Experimental Methods in Educational Evaluation - John A Maxwell, Philip G Bashook, and Leslie J Sandlow A Case Study Evaluating the Econometric Evaluations of Training Programs with Experimental Data - Robert J Lalonde Social Experimentation - Robert H Haveman and Social Experimentation Causal Modeling with the TETRAD Program - Clark Glymour and Richard Scheines Review of Developments in Meta-Analytic Method - Robert L Bangert-Drowns Best-Evidence Synthesis - Robert E Slavin An Alternative to Meta-Analytic and Traditional Reviews The Narrative Structure of Policy Analysis - Thomas J Kaplan

Evaluation studies : review annual

A 1986 national survey of use of health services shows a significant deficit in access to health care among black compared with white Americans. This gap was experienced by all income levels of black Americans. In addition, the study points to significant underuse by blacks of needed medical care. Moreover, blacks compared with whites are less likely to be satisfied with the qualitative ways their physicians treat them when they are ill, more dissatisfied with the care they receive when hospitalized, and more likely to believe that the duration of their hospitalizations is too short.

Access to medical care for black and white Americans. A matter of continuing concern.

With the emergence of nosocomial infections as a serious problem among US hospitals, the Center for Disease Control undertook in 1974 a nationwide study to evaluate approaches to infection control. The three-phased project, now known as the Study on the Efficacy of Nosocomial Infection Control, or SENIC Project, was designed with three primary objectives: 1) to determine whether (and, if so, to what degree) the implementation of infection surveillance and control programs (ISCPs) has lowered the rate ofnosocomi al infection, 2) to describe the current status of ISCPs and infection rates, and 3) to demonstrate the relationships among characteristics of hospitals and patients, components of ISCPs, and changes in the infection rate. With data collection completed in a nationally representative sample of hospitals, analysis is underway to identify approaches to infection control that are most effective for the least cost to hospitals and to point out additional specific questions to be answered by future research.

Study on the efficacy of nosocomial infection control (senic project): summary of study design

• To evaluate the adequacy of cervical and breast cancer screening in the United States, data were analyzed from a 1986 nationwide telephone survey (n=4659) Papanicolaou smears within the recommended three- to five-year interval were reported by 79% of women aged 20 years or older Within the preceding year, 55% of women aged 40 years or older had breast examinations performed by physicians, and 20% of women aged 50 years or older had mammograms Women who were uninsured or lower in socioeconomic status were less likely to have each of these three preventive measures, independent of the age, health status, and frequency of physician visits of the respondent In addition, women aged 50 years or older were less likely to have had Papanicolaou smears (63% vs 89%) and breast examinations (52% vs 68%) than those women aged 20 to 49 years These findings suggest that women who are older, uninsured, or lower in socioeconomic status are at an increased risk for not receiving preventive care, and that screening mammography, although more common than a decade ago, is still markedly underused ( Arch Intern Med 1988;148:1177-1181)

https://jamanetwork.com/HttpHandlers/ArticlePdfHandler.ashx?journal=intemed&articleId=609881&pdfFileName=archinte_148_5_026.pdf

Who gets screened for cervical and breast cancer? Results from a new national survey.

Prologue: Most Americans believe that health care should be available to all those who are sick or injured, regardless of economic or other circumstances. At the same time, most Americans consider the cost of medical care as the most troubling dimension of the provision of this service, and believe that cost constraints should be applied. Where to make such reductions without erasing the gains achieved in access to care over the last several decades, or hurting the least fortunate among us, is the issue. In this lead essay, Howard Freeman and his colleagues report signs of deterioration in access to medical care for the nations poor, minorities, and uninsured. Their study is the third study on access underwritten by The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The two previous access studies, ironically, provoked substantially different reactions, stemming more from a change in the political climate than from the findings themselves. At the time of the first survey, 1976, national health insurance (NHI) legislatio...

Howard E. Freeman

Papers

Evaluation studies : review annual

Access to medical care for black and white Americans. A matter of continuing concern.

Study on the efficacy of nosocomial infection control (senic project): summary of study design

Who gets screened for cervical and breast cancer? Results from a new national survey.

Americans Report On Their Access To Health Care