 The Analysis of Human Feelings: A Practical Suggestion for a Robustness TestJeffrey Bloem and Andrew J. Oswald Review of Income and Wealth, 2022, vol. 68, issue 3, 689-710 Abstract: Governments, multinational companies, and researchers today collect unprecedented amounts of data on human feelings. These data provide information on citizens’ happiness, levels of customer satisfaction, employees’ satisfaction, mental stress, societal trust, and other important variables. Yet a key scientific difficulty tends to be downplayed, or even ignored, by many users of such information. Human feelings are not measured in objective cardinal units. This article aims to address some of the ensuing empirical challenges. It suggests an analytical way to approach the scientific complications of ordinal data. The article describes a dichotomous‐around‐the‐median (DAM) test, which, crucially, uses information only on direction within an ordering and deliberately discards the potentially unreliable statistical information in ordered data. Applying the proposed DAM approach, this article shows that it is possible to check and replicate some of the key conclusions of previous research—including earlier work on the effects upon human well‐being of higher income. Date: 2022 Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bla:revinw:v:68:y:2022:i:3:p:689-710 Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from Access Statistics for this article Review of Income and Wealth is currently edited by Conchita D'Ambrosio and Robert J. Hill More articles in Review of Income and Wealth from International Association for Research in Income and Wealth Contact information at EDIRC. |
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