Are they really that happy? Exploring scale recalibration in estimates of well-being.
OBJECTIVE
The authors addressed a lingering concern in research on hedonic adaptation to adverse circumstances. This research typically relies on self-report measures of well-being, which are subjective and depend on the standards that people use in making judgments. The authors employed a novel method to test for, and rule out, such scale recalibration in self-reports of well-being.


METHODS
The authors asked patients with chronic illness (either lung disease or diabetes) and nonpatients to evaluate quality of life (QoL) for the patients' disease. In addition, the authors also asked them to rank and rate the aversiveness of a diverse set of adverse circumstances, allowing examination of both the numerical ratings and ordering among items.


METHODS
The authors compared patients' and nonpatients' ratings and rankings for the patients' disease and other conditions.


CONCLUSIONS
The authors found that patients not only assigned higher numerical QoL ratings to their own disease than did nonpatients but also ranked it higher among the broad set of conditions. These results suggest that scale recalibration cannot account for discrepant QoL ratings between patients and nonpatients. More generally, this study presents a new approach for measuring well-being that is not subject to the problem of scale recalibration.
Lacey
Heather P
HP
Department of Applied Psychology, Bryant University, Smithfield, RI 02917, USA. hlacey@bryant.edu
Fagerlin
Angela
A
Loewenstein
George
G
Smith
Dylan M
DM
Riis
Jason
J
Ubel
Peter A
PA
D002908:Chronic Disease; D005260:Female; D006240:Happiness; D006801:Humans; D008171:Lung Diseases / Q000453:epidemiology / Q000523:psychology; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D015588:Observer Variation; D011788:Quality of Life / Q000523:psychology*; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires