TY  - JOUR
AU  - Krueger,Alan B.
AU  - Schkade,David A.
TI  - The Reliability of Subjective Well-Being Measures
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 13027
PY  - 2007
Y2  - April 2007
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w13027
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w13027.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Alan B. Krueger
Industrial Relations Section
Firestone Library
Princeton University
Princeton, NJ 08544
Tel: 609/258-4046
Fax: 609/258-2907
E-Mail: akrueger@princeton.edu

David Schkade
University of California, San Diego
9500 Gilman Drive #0093
La  Jolla, CA  92093-0093
E-Mail: dschkade@ucsd.edu
AB  - This paper studies the test-retest reliability of a standard self-reported life satisfaction measure and of affect measures collected from a diary method.  The sample consists of 229 women who were interviewed on Thursdays, two weeks apart, in Spring 2005.  The correlation of net affect (i.e., duration-weighted positive feelings less negative feelings) measured two weeks apart is 0.64, which is slightly higher than the correlation of life satisfaction (r=0.59).  Correlations between income, net affect and life satisfaction are presented, and adjusted for attenuation bias due to measurement error.  Life satisfaction is found to correlate much more strongly with income than does net affect.  Components of affect that are more person-specific are found to have a higher test-retest reliability than components of affect that are more specific to the particular situation.  While reliability figures for subjective well-being measures are lower than those typically found for education, income and many other microeconomic variables, they are probably sufficiently high to support much of the research that is currently being undertaken on subjective well-being, particularly in studies where group means are compared (e.g., across activities or demographic groups).
ER  -