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Synthesising Hedonic and Eudaimonic Approaches: A Culturally Responsive Four-Factor Model of Aggregate Subjective Well-Being for Hong Kong Children

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  • Simon Matthew Herd

    (The University of Hong Kong, Faculty of Education)

Abstract

This paper tested a culturally responsive four-factor model of aggregate subjective well-being (SWB). Hedonic SWB is often presented as the definitive articulation of SWB, whilst overlooking the impact of Eudaimonic well-being (EWB) on Aggregate SWB. Moreover, children from Confucian Heritage Cultures (CHC) are reported as having lower levels of SWB than children from other countries in studies that principally rely on hedonic instruments, thereby ignoring alternative indicators of well-being. While being a vital childhood indicator, hedonic SWB may not entirely capture the essence of well-being in CHC children who have different ontological interpretations of well-being. As an answer to this methodological shortcoming, EWB was included as a complementary component to hedonic SWB with it being hypothesised that EWB could bring added cultural responsiveness to the measurement of SWB and compensate for the under-reporting of levels of aggregate SWB in CHC children. Upon examination of the four components of SWB concurrently, it was possible to verify that the CHC sample of children had higher levels of EWB in absolute terms compared to the hedonic SWB components. Equally, support was found for a four-factor structure of SWB from which a higher order factor of SWB, termed as aggregate SWB, could meaningfully be represented as a combination of the four components. Within this model, EWB accounted for the most variance out of the four factors. These results have implications for the measurement of SWB and better understanding the developmental needs of CHC children thus providing a more attuned and culturally grounded indicator.

Suggested Citation

  • Simon Matthew Herd, 2022. "Synthesising Hedonic and Eudaimonic Approaches: A Culturally Responsive Four-Factor Model of Aggregate Subjective Well-Being for Hong Kong Children," Child Indicators Research, Springer;The International Society of Child Indicators (ISCI), vol. 15(3), pages 1103-1129, June.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:chinre:v:15:y:2022:i:3:d:10.1007_s12187-021-09901-5
    DOI: 10.1007/s12187-021-09901-5
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