Priming and the Reliability of Subjective Well-being Measures

Daniel Sgroi, Eugenio Proto, Andrew Oswald and Alexander Dobson
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Alexander Dobson: Department of Economics, University of Warwick

The Warwick Economics Research Paper Series (TWERPS) from University of Warwick, Department of Economics

Abstract: Economists and behavioural scientists are beginning to make extensive use of measures of subjective well-being, and such data are potentially of value to policy-makers. A particularly famous difficulty is that of “priming”: if the order or nature of survey questions changes people’s likely replies then we have grounds to be concerned about the reliability of well-being data and inferences from them. This study tests for priming effects from important life events. It presents evidence from a laboratory experiment which indicates that subjective well-being measures are in general robust to such concerns.

Keywords: happiness; life satisfaction; subjective well-being; priming, surveys JEL Codes: D03; C83; C91 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2010
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hap and nep-neu
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

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Working Paper: Priming and the Reliability of Subjective Well-being Measures (2010)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:wrk:warwec:935

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