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Subjective well-being and the individual material situation in Central Europe: A Bayesian network approach
Švorc, Jan ; Vomlel, Jiří
The objective of this paper is to explore the associations between the subjective well-being (SWB) and the subjective and objective measures of the individual material situation in the four post-communist countries of Central Europe (the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, and Slovakia). The material situation is measured by income, relative income compared to others, relative income compared to one’s own past, perceived economic strain, financial problems, material deprivation, and housing problems. Our analysis is based on empirical data from the third wave of European Quality of Life Study conducted in 2011. Bayesian networks as a graphical representation of the relations between SWB and the material situation have been constructed in five versions. The models have been assessed using the Bayesian Information Criterion (BIC) and SWB prediction accuracy, and compared\nwith Ordinal Logistic Regression (OLR). Expert knowledge, as well as three different algorithms (greedy, Gobnilp, and Tree-augmented Naive Bayes) were used for learning the network structures. Network parameters were learned using the EM algorithm. Parameters based on OLR were learned for a version of the expert model. The Gobnilp model, the Markov equivalent to the greedy model, is BIC optimal. The OLR predicts SWB slightly better than the other models. We conclude that the objective material conditions' influence on SWB is rather indirect, through the subjective situational assessment of various aspects related to the individual material conditions.
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Bayesian Networks for the Analysis of Subjective Well-Being
Švorc, Jan ; Vomlel, Jiří
We use Bayesian Networks to model the influence of diverse socio-economic factors on subjective well-being and their interrelations. The classical statistical analysis aims at finding significant explanatory variables, while Bayesian Networks can also help sociologists to explain and visualize the problem in its complexity. Using Bayesian Networks the sociologists may get a deeper insight into the interplay of all measured factors and their influence on the variable of a special interest. In the paper we present several Bayesian Network models -- each being optimal from a different perspective. We show how important it is to pay a special attention to a local structure of conditional probability tables. Finally, we present results of an experimental evaluation of the suggested approaches based on real data from a large international survey. We believe that the suggested approach is well applicable to other sociological problems and that Bayesian Networks represent a new valuable tool for sociological research.
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Attachment to Parents and Its Influence on Adolescents' Well-Being
Štětinová, Tereza ; Křížová, Ivana (advisor) ; Presslerová, Pavla (referee)
The purpose of this thesis is to explore a topic of attachment to parents and its influence on adolescents' subjective well-being. The theoretical part deals with the specifics of the developmental period of middle adolescence. Afterwards, it presents the main ideas of the concepts of attachment and well-being. The great emphasis is also given to gender differences and changes in attachment and subjective well-being across the life span. The practical part focuses on correlation between adolescents' attachment to parents and their well-being by means of a questionnaire survey. It tries to provide a comprehensive overview of the topic and that is why it also deals with the analysis of gender differences and differences between attachment to mothers and attachment to fathers. The research brings interesting results. It confirms the expected positive correlation between girls' well-being and their attachment to both mother and father, however it does not prove either the correlation between boys' well-being and their attachment to mother or correlation between boys' well-being and their attachment to father. The analysis of gender differences also shows that girls and boys do not differ in attachment to mother, but they do differ in attachment to father. Girls show lower quality of the relationship...
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Cross-Country Analysis of Life Satisfaction
Stehlíková, Zuzana ; Janhuba, Radek (advisor) ; Paulus, Michal (referee)
This thesis examines the relations between subjective well-being and economic, politic and social characteristics of individual countries. We study the link between three components of subjective well-being - life satisfaction, positive affect and negative affect and other country characteristics. First, we use the dataset containing countries from almost all countries of the whole world and then with a more detailed European dataset. For the analysis of life satisfaction, panel data models are used. The results indicate that we are able to explain better variation in life satisfaction by our set of explanatory variables in comparison with positive affect and negative affect. In the former dataset, we discovered that the most important determinants of life satisfaction are GDP per capita, health, freedom to make life choices, political conditions and social support. In the latter, European dataset revealed a strong negative correlation between tertiary education attainment and happiness. The results also indicate that female representation in national parliament is an important predictor of life satisfaction in European countries. This supports the idea that equality between men and women plays an important role in developed societies. Keywords Subjective well-being, Happiness, Life satisfaction,...
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Employing Bayesian Networks for Subjective Well-being Prediction
Švorc, Jan ; Vomlel, Jiří
This contribution aims at using Bayesian networks for modelling the relations between the individual subjective well-being (SWB) and the individual material situation. The material situation is approximated by subjective measures (perceived economic strain, subjective evaluation of the income relative to most people in the country and to own past) and objective measures (household’s income, material deprivation, financial problems and housing defects). The suggested Bayesian network represents the relations among SWB and the variables approximating the material situation. The structure is established based on the expertise gained from literature, whereas the parameters are learnt based on empirical data from 3rd edition of European Quality of Life Study for the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia conducted in 2011. Prediction accuracy of SWB is tested and compared with two benchmark models whose structures are learnt using Gobnilp software and a greedy algorithm built in Hugin software. SWB prediction accuracy of the expert model is 66,83%, which is significantly different from no information rate of 55,16%. It is slightly lower than the two machine learnt benchmark models.
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Happiness and Income
Machová, Veronika ; Cahlík, Tomáš (advisor) ; Pertold-Gebicka, Barbara (referee)
This thesis examines relationships between average national subjective well-being and three economic factors-income (expressed as gross domestic product [GDP] per capita), unemployment, and economic freedom-applying fixed effects, random effects, and correlated random effects methods on panel data for countries worldwide, which are divided into three groups based on their level of development. Two measures of subjective well- being-feeling of happiness, and life satisfaction-are used, and the outputs are then compared for both. The results indicate that all three factors have a significant impact on subjective well-being, and GDP per capita seems to be the strongest determinant thereof. Moreover, the findings differ depending on whether life satisfaction or happiness is used as the measure of subjective well-being. The effects of GDP per capita and economic freedom are higher on the former than the latter.
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Life Satisfaction and Acculturation among Immigrants in the Czech Republic
Gembčíková, Sandra ; Šulová, Lenka (advisor) ; Štětovská, Iva (referee)
This master thesis is dedicated to an acculturation process and its relations to life satisfaction. In the theoretical part the concept of acculturation is presented and conceived as changes accompanying migration to a foreign country. Different acculturation strategies are described, as well as some of the factors that affect influence the complex process of acculturation. One of the chapters is dedicated to a Czech milieu and its legislative and social conditions for immigration, and describing two main third country migrant populations - Ukrainians and Vietnamese. Theoretical part is wrapped up with an introduction to subjective well-being and life satisfaction, with a focus on intercultural context. The empirical part consists of a description and results of a quantitative questionnaire survey among immigrants originally from Vietnam and Ukraine (N = 162) and it is based on Acculturation Scale (Cortés, Rogler, Malgady, 1994), Satisfaction With Life Scale (Diener, Emmons, Larsen, Griffin, 1985) and Bicultural Identity Integration Scale (Chen, Benet-Martínez, Bond, 2008). Most of the respondents adopted integration strategy, however there wasn't a significant difference in life satisfaction among acculturation strategies. The data analysis found several significant variables which participate on...
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Subjective life satisfaction of children of 5th and 9th grade of primary schools in Hradec Králové
Škubníková, Hana ; Voňková, Hana (advisor) ; Zvírotský, Michal (referee)
The aim of this thesis is to compare subjective life satisfaction of children at 5th and 9th grades of primary schools in Hradec Králové. The thesis focuses mainly on the way of spending their leisure time, satisfaction with the social contacts and family background, interacting in school, psychosomatic problems and addictive risks. The work compares the responses of individual years and gender of respondents. The thesis finds no significcant diferences between 5th and 9th grade. The significcant diferences were found between gender of respondents. Powered by TCPDF (www.tcpdf.org)
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Determinants of life satisfaction in Czechia with the focus on geographical factors
Procházka, Petr ; Novotný, Josef (advisor) ; Andráško, Ivan (referee)
The objective of this thesis is to analyse determinants of subjective well-being in Czechia and to compare them with other empirical evidence from Czechia and abroad. Main theoretical approaches include those emphasising "psychological" factors and those emphasising factors outside of the human personality. Data from the Public Opinion Research Centre of more than 2,000 respondents from Czechia of years 2013 and 2014 were analysed statistically. Measures of so-called global and local subjective well-being were dependent variables. Independent variables include "geographical" and demographic variables and other dummies. It was confirmed that people living in more populated buildings, with a lower space mobility, older, of a lower employment status or unemployed, lower education and left-wing oriented declare usually a lower results on the subjective well-being, too. Gender and income had variable effect on the subjective well-being. Theoretical assumptions were not confirmed considering the settlement size, mode of commuting and religion.
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Do Determinants of Happiness Vary across Demographic Groups?
Marčiš, Peter ; Chytilová, Julie (advisor) ; Janotík, Tomáš (referee)
This thesis examines relationships between subjective well-being of individuals and various factors (determinants of happiness) using the ordinary least squares (OLS) method separately for each of the major religious denominations, world regions, and sizes of municipalities. The results are then compared across the specified groups in order to find out if there are any significant differences. Based on the output of the analysis it can be inferred that there are remarkable differences especially across religious denominations and world regions where the most notable differences are found in case of relative income, unemployment, gender and marital statuses. On the other hand, the differences across various municipality sizes are not so frequent or substantial and the most significant variations are found for variables representing GDP per capita and marital statuses. Key Words subjective well-being, determinants of happiness, religious denominations, world regions, municipality sizes, comparison, differences
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