To synthesize a few of the comments on this postâThis comment sounds like a general instance of the issue that @geoffrey points out in another comment: what @Charlie Harrison is describing as a violation of âprediction invarianceâ may just be a violation of âmeasurement invarianceâ; in particular because happiness (the real thing, not the measure) may have a different relationship with GMEOH events over time.
I basically agree with this critique of the results in the post, but want to add that I nonetheless think this is a very cool piece of research and I am excited to see more exploration along these lines!
One idea that I hadâmaybe someone has done something like this? -- is to ask people to watch a film or read a novel and rate the life satisfaction of the characters in the story. For instance, they might be asked to answer a question like âHow much does Jane Eyre feel satisfied by her life, on a scale of 1-10?â. (Note that we arenât asking how much the respondent empathizes with Jane or would enjoy being her, simply how much satisfaction they believe Jane gets from Janeâs life.) This might allow us to get a shared baseline for comparison. If peopleâs assessments of Janeâs life go up or down over time, (or differ between people) it seems unlikely that this is a result of a violation of âprediction invarianceâ, since Jane Eyre is an unchanging novel with fixed facts about how Jane feels. Instead, it seems like this would indicate a change in measurement: i.e. how people assign numerical scores to particular welfare states.
haha, yes, people have done this! This is called âvignette-adjustmentâ. You basically get people to read short stories and rate how happy they think the character is. There are a few potential issues with this method: (1) they arenât included in long-term panel data; (2) people might interpret the characterâs latent happiness differently based on their own happiness
Anchoring vignettes may also sometimes lack stability within persons. That said, itâs par for the course that any one source of evidence for invariance is going to have its strengths and weaknesses. Weâll always be looking for convergence across methods rather than a single cure-all.
To synthesize a few of the comments on this postâThis comment sounds like a general instance of the issue that @geoffrey points out in another comment: what @Charlie Harrison is describing as a violation of âprediction invarianceâ may just be a violation of âmeasurement invarianceâ; in particular because happiness (the real thing, not the measure) may have a different relationship with GMEOH events over time.
I basically agree with this critique of the results in the post, but want to add that I nonetheless think this is a very cool piece of research and I am excited to see more exploration along these lines!
One idea that I hadâmaybe someone has done something like this? -- is to ask people to watch a film or read a novel and rate the life satisfaction of the characters in the story. For instance, they might be asked to answer a question like âHow much does Jane Eyre feel satisfied by her life, on a scale of 1-10?â. (Note that we arenât asking how much the respondent empathizes with Jane or would enjoy being her, simply how much satisfaction they believe Jane gets from Janeâs life.) This might allow us to get a shared baseline for comparison. If peopleâs assessments of Janeâs life go up or down over time, (or differ between people) it seems unlikely that this is a result of a violation of âprediction invarianceâ, since Jane Eyre is an unchanging novel with fixed facts about how Jane feels. Instead, it seems like this would indicate a change in measurement: i.e. how people assign numerical scores to particular welfare states.
haha, yes, people have done this! This is called âvignette-adjustmentâ. You basically get people to read short stories and rate how happy they think the character is. There are a few potential issues with this method: (1) they arenât included in long-term panel data; (2) people might interpret the characterâs latent happiness differently based on their own happiness
Oh, great, thanks so much! Iâll check this out.
Anchoring vignettes may also sometimes lack stability within persons. That said, itâs par for the course that any one source of evidence for invariance is going to have its strengths and weaknesses. Weâll always be looking for convergence across methods rather than a single cure-all.