Explore the vast range of titles available.

Subjective wellbeing and health are closely linked to age. Three aspects of subjective wellbeing can be distinguished—evaluative wellbeing (or life satisfaction), hedonic wellbeing (feelings of happiness, sadness, anger, stress, and pain), and eudemonic wellbeing (sense of purpose and meaning in life). We review recent advances in the specialty of psychological wellbeing, and present new analyses about the pattern of wellbeing across ages and the association between wellbeing and survival at older ages. The Gallup World Poll, a continuing survey in more than 160 countries, shows a U-shaped relation between evaluative wellbeing and age in high-income, English speaking countries, with the lowest levels of wellbeing in ages 45–54 years. But this pattern is not universal. For example, respondents from the former Soviet Union and eastern Europe show a large progressive reduction in wellbeing with age, respondents from Latin America also shows decreased wellbeing with age, whereas wellbeing in sub-Saharan Africa shows little change with age. The relation between physical health and subjective wellbeing is bidirectional. Older people with illnesses such as coronary heart disease, arthritis, and chronic lung disease show both increased levels of depressed mood and impaired hedonic and eudemonic wellbeing. Wellbeing might also have a protective role in health maintenance. In an analysis of the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing, we identify that eudemonic wellbeing is associated with increased survival; 29·3% of people in the lowest wellbeing quartile died during the average follow-up period of 8·5 years compared with 9·3% of those in the highest quartile. Associations were independent of age, sex, demographic factors, and baseline mental and physical health. We conclude that the wellbeing of elderly people is an important objective for both economic and health policy. Present psychological and economic theories do not adequately account for the variations in patterns of wellbeing with age across different parts of the world. The apparent association between wellbeing and survival is consistent with a protective role of high wellbeing, but alternative explanations cannot be ruled out at this stage.

There is an expectation that, on average, pain will increase with age, through accumulated injury, physical wear and tear, and an increasing burden of disease. Consistent with that expectation, pain rises with age into old age in otherwealthy countries. However, in America today, the elderly report less pain than those in midlife. This is the mystery of American pain. Using multiple datasets and definitions of pain, we show today’s midlife Americans have had more pain throughout adulthood than did today’s elderly. Disaggregating the cross-section of ages by year of birth and completion of a bachelor’s degree, we find, for thosewith less education, that each successive birth cohort has a higher prevalence of pain at each age—a result not found for those with a bachelor’s degree. Thus, the gap in pain between the more and less educated has widened in each successive birth cohort. The increase seen across birth cohorts cannot be explained by changes in occupation or levels of obesity for the less educated, but fits a more general pattern seen in the ongoing erosion of working-class life for those born after 1950. If these patterns continue, pain prevalence will continue to increase for all adults; importantly, tomorrow’s elderly will be sicker than today’s elderly, with potentially serious implications for healthcare.

The degree to which episodic and semantic memory processes contribute to retrospective self-reports have been shown to depend on the length of reporting period. Robinson and Clore (2002) argued that when the amount of accessible detail decreases due to longer reporting periods, an episodic retrieval strategy is abandoned in favor of a semantic retrieval strategy. The current study further examines this shift between retrieval strategies by conceptually replicating the model of Robinson and Clore (2002) for both emotions and symptoms and by attempting to estimate the exact moment of the theorized shift. A sample of 469 adults reported the extent to which they experienced 8 states (excited, happy, calm, sad, anxious, angry, pain, stress) over 12 time frames (right now to in general). A series of curvilinear and piecewise linear multilevel growth models were used to examine the pattern of response times and response levels (i.e., rated intensity on a 1-5 scale) across the different time frames. Replicating previous results, both response times and response levels increased with longer time frames. In contrast to prior work, no consistent evidence was found for a change in response patterns that would suggest a shift in retrieval strategies (i.e., a flattening or decrease of the slope for longer time frames). The relationship between the time frames and response times/levels was similar for emotions and symptoms. Although the current study showed a pronounced effect of time frame on response times and response levels, it did not replicate prior work that suggested a shift from episodic to semantic memory as time frame duration increased. This indicates that even for longer time frames individuals might attempt to retrieve episodic information to provide a response. We suggest that studies relying on self-report should use the same well-defined time frames across all self-reported measures.

We consider two happiness puzzles. First, many studies show that only relative income matters for well-being. Yet the Gallup data for the United States and from the rest of the world show no such result, at least for life evaluation. There may be relative income effects in hedonic well-being though other interpretations are available. Second, more religious people typically report higher experiential well-being but more religious places have worse well-being on average, both across US states and across countries. More religious states and counties in the US also have worse murder rates, deaths from cardiovascular disease and from cancer.

Recent evidence suggests that psychological health deteriorated during the COVID-19 pandemic but far less is known about changes in other measures of well-being. We examined changes in a broad set of measures of well-being among seniors just before and after the recognition of community spread of COVID-19 in the United States. We fielded two waves of a survey to a large, national online panel of adults ages 60 to 68 at wave 1. We measured depressive symptoms, negative affect, positive affect, pain, life satisfaction and self-rated health in each survey wave. 16,644 adults answered well-being questions in waves 1 and 2 of our survey (mean[SD]: age 64 [2.6]; 10,165 women [61%]; 15,161 [91%] white). We found large (20%; p<0.001) increases in the rate of depressive symptoms (1.4 percentage points; 95% CI, 0.97 to 1.86) and negative mood (0.225 scale points; 95% CI, 0.205 to 0.245) but no change in self-reported health and a decrease (12.5%; p<0.001) in the rate of self-reported pain (5 percentage points; 95% CI, -5.8 to -4.3). Depressive symptoms and negative affect increased more for women. Higher perceived risk of getting COVID-19 and of dying from the disease were associated with larger increases in the rate of depressive symptoms and negative affect and larger decreases in positive affect and life satsifaction. COVID-19 related job/income loss was the only pandemic-related factor predictive of the decline in pain. Although depressive symptoms and mood worsened during the COVID-19 pandemic, other measures of well-being were either not materially affected or even improved.

Mobile device-based ecological momentary assessment (mobile-EMA) is increasingly used to collect participants' data in real-time and in context. Although EMA offers methodological advantages, these advantages can be diminished by participant noncompliance. However, evidence on how well participants comply with mobile-EMA protocols and how study design factors associated with participant compliance is limited, especially in the youth literature. To systematically and meta-analytically examine youth's compliance to mobile-EMA protocols and moderators of participant compliance in clinical and nonclinical settings. Studies using mobile devices to collect EMA data among youth (age ≤18 years old) were identified. A systematic review was conducted to describe the characteristics of mobile-EMA protocols and author-reported factors associated with compliance. Random effects meta-analyses were conducted to estimate the overall compliance across studies and to explore factors associated with differences in youths' compliance. This review included 42 unique studies that assessed behaviors, subjective experiences, and contextual information. Mobile phones were used as the primary mode of EMA data collection in 48% (20/42) of the reviewed studies. In total, 12% (5/42) of the studies used wearable devices in addition to the EMA data collection platforms. About half of the studies (62%, 24/42) recruited youth from nonclinical settings. Most (98%, 41/42) studies used a time-based sampling protocol. Among these studies, most (95%, 39/41) prompted youth 2-9 times daily, for a study length ranging from 2-42 days. Sampling frequency and study length did not differ between studies with participants from clinical versus nonclinical settings. Most (88%, 36/41) studies with a time-based sampling protocol defined compliance as the proportion of prompts to which participants responded. In these studies, the weighted average compliance rate was 78.3%. The average compliance rates were not different between studies with clinical (76.9%) and nonclinical (79.2%; P=.29) and studies that used only a mobile-EMA platform (77.4%) and mobile platform plus additional wearable devices (73.0%, P=.36). Among clinical studies, the mean compliance rate was significantly lower in studies that prompted participants 2-3 times (73.5%) or 4-5 times (66.9%) compared with studies with a higher sampling frequency (6+ times: 89.3%). Among nonclinical studies, a higher average compliance rate was observed in studies that prompted participants 2-3 times daily (91.7%) compared with those that prompted participants more frequently (4-5 times: 77.4%; 6+ times: 75.0%). The reported compliance rates did not differ by duration of EMA period among studies from either clinical or nonclinical settings. The compliance rate among mobile-EMA studies in youth is moderate but suboptimal. Study design may affect protocol compliance differently between clinical and nonclinical participants; including additional wearable devices did not affect participant compliance. A more consistent compliance-related result reporting practices can facilitate understanding and improvement of participant compliance with EMA data collection among youth.

Purpose Ambulatory and diary methods of self-reported symptoms and well-being have received increasing interest in recent years. These methods are a valuable addition to traditional strategies for the assessment of patient-reported outcomes (PROs) in that they capture patients' recent symptom experiences repeatedly in their natural environments. In this article, we review ways that incorporating diary methods into PRO measurement can facilitate research on quality of life. Methods Several diary methods are currently available, and they include \"real-time\" (Ecological Momentary Assessment) and \"near-real-time\" (end-of-day assessments, Day Reconstruction Method) formats. We identify the key benefits of these methods for PRO research. Results (1) In validity testing, diary assessments can serve as a standard for evaluating the ecological validity and for identifying recall biases of PRO instruments with longer-term recall formats. (2) In research and clinical settings, diaries have the ability to closely capture variations and dynamic changes in quality of life that are difficult or not possible to obtain from traditional PRO assessments. (3) In test construction, repeated diary assessments can expand understanding of the measurement characteristics (e.g., reliability, dimensionality) of PROs in that parameters for differences between people can be compared with those for variation within people. Conclusions Diary assessment strategies can enrich the repertoire of PRO assessment tools and enhance the measurement of patients' quality of life.

Subjective well-being has captured the interest of scientists and policy-makers as a way of knowing how individuals and groups evaluate and experience their lives: that is, their sense of meaning, their satisfaction with life, and their everyday moods. One of the more striking findings in this literature is a strong association between age and subjective well-being: in Western countries it has a U-shaped association over the lifespan. Despite many efforts, the reason for the curve is largely unexplained, for example, by traditional demographic variables. In this study we examined twelve social and psychological variables that could account for the U-shaped curve. In an Internet sample of 3,294 adults ranging in age from 40 to 69 we observed the expected steep increase in a measure of subjective well-being, the Cantril Ladder. Regression analyses demonstrated that the social-psychological variables explained about two-thirds of the curve and accounting for them significantly flattened the U-shape. Perceived stress, distress-depression, an open perspective about the future, wisdom, satisfaction with social relationships, and family strain were measures that had pronounced impacts on reducing the curve. These findings advance our understanding of why subjective well-being is associated with age and point the way to future studies.