title: Detecting well-being via computerized content analysis of brief diary entries.
abstract: Two studies evaluated the correspondence between self-reported well-being and codings of emotion and life content by the Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC; Pennebaker, Booth, & Francis, 2011). Open-ended diary responses were collected from 206 participants daily for 3 weeks (Study 1) and from 139 participants twice a week for 8 weeks (Study 2). LIWC negative emotion consistently correlated with self-reported negative emotion. LIWC positive emotion correlated with self-reported positive emotion in Study 1 but not in Study 2. No correlations were observed with global life satisfaction. Using a co-occurrence coding method to combine LIWC emotion codings with life-content codings, we estimated the frequency of positive and negative events in 6 life domains (family, friends, academics, health, leisure, and money). Domain-specific event frequencies predicted self-reported satisfaction in all domains in Study 1 but not consistently in Study 2. We suggest that the correspondence between LIWC codings and self-reported well-being is affected by the number of writing samples collected per day as well as the target period (e.g., past day vs. past week) assessed by the self-report measure. Extensions and possible implications for the analyses of similar types of open-ended data (e.g., social media messages) are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2013 APA, all rights reserved).
authors.affiliation: Singapore Management University.
authors.forename: William
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Tov
authors.forename: Kok Leong
authors.initials: KL
authors.lastname: Ng
authors.forename: Han
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Lin
authors.forename: Lin
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Qiu
mesh_terms: D001007:Anxiety / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000523:psychology*; D003863:Depression / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000523:psychology*; D004644:Emotions; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008016:Life Change Events; D008037:Linguistics; D008297:Male; D008499:Medical Records; D009323:Natural Language Processing; D011594:Psychometrics / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D011788:Quality of Life / Q000523:psychology*; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D012846:Singapore; D012984:Software; D013334:Students / Q000523:psychology; D014956:Writing; D055815:Young Adult