REGISTER

Workshop Title: A Crash Course on the Economics of Wellbeing

Instructor: Dr. Martijn Hendriks

Date and Time: Monday 21 July, 9:00am - noon 

Location: University of Luxembourg (room TBA)

Fee: 

• $35 USD (ISQOLS Members)/$20 USD (Student, Retired, Developing Country ISQOLS Members); 

• $50 USD (Non-ISQOLS members)/$35 USD (Student, Retired, Developing Country non-ISQOLS Members)

Workshop Description:

This workshop offers early-career and mid-career researchers and practitioners essential insights into the economics of well-being. The workshop connects economics with its ultimate purpose: understanding and improving human well-being. It is designed for an interdisciplinary audience; the workshop welcomes both economists and non-economists who are eager to explore how economic behavior and phenomena relate to well-being. We will cover some fundamental questions, including:

• 1.       What are the dominant economic and policy perspectives on well-being?

• 2.       Do people seek to maximize happiness?

• 3.       How does happiness shape economic behavior and outcomes?

• 4.       Why hasn’t economic growth resulted in much greater happiness?

• 5.       How can organizations foster employee well-being?

Activities and Duration: The 3-hour workshop combines lecturing with interactive discussions, individual exercises, and audiovisual aids. Active participation is expected.

Reading Material: The workshop is based on leading academic studies in the economics of well-being. References will be provided during the workshop.

Workshop Instructor: Dr. Martijn Hendriks is the deputy scientific director of the Erasmus Happiness Economics Research Organization (EHERO) based at Erasmus University Rotterdam. He also serves as a visiting associate professor at the University of Johannesburg, associate editor for the Journal of Happiness Studies and Applied Research in Quality of Life, executive board member at the International Society for Quality-of-Life Studies (ISQOLS), and as a member of the World Wellbeing Panel.

REGISTER

Workshop Title: A Crash Course on the Psychology of Wellbeing

Instructor: Dr. M. Joseph Sirgy 

Date and Time: Monday 21 July, 1:00pm-4:00pm 

Location: University of Luxembourg (room TBA)

Fee: 

• $35 USD (ISQOLS Members)/$20 USD (Student, Retired, Developing Country ISQOLS Members); 

• $50 USD (Non-ISQOLS members)/$35 USD (Student, Retired, Developing Country non-ISQOLS Members)

Workshop Description: This workshop serves to introduce many novice well-being/QOL researchers to the burgeoning research on the psychology of well-being to help them ease into this stream of research with some confidence. The workshop will provide an overview of the following areas of research on the psychology of well-being and quality of life:

·       Philosophical Foundations, Definitions, and Measures

·       Consequences of Happiness

·       Objective Reality and Its Effects on Happiness

·       Subjective Reality and Its Effects on Happiness

·       Life Domains and Their Effects on Happiness

·       Population Segments and Happiness

Activities and Duration: The workshop is essentially an in-person seminar: lecture style with some degree of instructor-participant interaction. The workshop is scheduled as a half-day session.

 Reading Material: This workshop will be based on the following book: Sirgy, M. Joseph (2020). The Psychology of Quality of Life: Wellbeing and Positive Mental Health. 3^rd edition. Cham: Springer Nature

Workshop Instructor: 

Prof. Dr.M. Joseph (Joe) Sirgyis a management psychologist (Ph.D., U/Massachusetts, 1979) and the Virginia Tech Real Estate Professor Emeritus of Marketing at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (USA) and Extraordinary Professor at the WorkWell Research Unit at North West University – Potchefstroom Campus (South Africa). He has published extensively in business ethics and quality of life (QOL). His awards include International Society for Quality-of-Life Studies’ (ISQOLS’) Distinguished Fellow Award, ISQOLS’ Distinguished QOL Researcher, Academy of Marketing Science’s (AMS) Distinguished Fellow Award, AMS’ Harold Berkman Service Award, Virginia Tech’s Pamplin Teaching Excellence Award/Holtzman Outstanding Educator Award and University Certificate of Teaching Excellence, the EuroMed Management Research Award, and the Macromarketing Society’s Robert W. Nason Award. Best paper awards include articles published in the Journal of Happiness Studies, the Journal of Travel Research, and Applied Research in Quality of Life. His editorial responsibilities include co-founding editor of Applied Research in Quality of Life, editor of the QOL section in the Journal of Macromarketing, editor-in-chief of the Journal of Macromarketing, editor of ISQOLS’/Springer’s book series on International Handbooks in QOL, Community QOL Indicators--Best Cases, Applied Research in QOL--Best Practices, and co-editor of the Springer book series on Human Well-Being and Policy Making.

REGISTER

Workshop Title:  The importance of collaboration between policy makers and research networks to achieve sustainable quality of life and well-being

Instructors: Dr. Graciela Tonon and Enrique Delamonica

Date and Time: Monday 21 July, 1:00pm-4:00pm 

Location: University of Luxembourg (room TBA)

Fee: 

• $35 USD (ISQOLS Members)/$20 USD (Student, Retired, Developing Country ISQOLS Members); 

• $50 USD (Non-ISQOLS members)/$35 USD (Student, Retired, Developing Country non-ISQOLS Members)

Workshop Description: The transfer of quality of life and well-being research results to the field of policy making may facilitate decision making and improve the population’s quality of life and well-being. Against this background, it is of particular interest to examine the role of the actors involved in the process. Researchers and policy makers have a different idea of what knowledge is. Researchers view knowledge theoretically and methodologically, while policymakers view it as the result of experience. The twenty-first century has seen an expansion in the construction of international collaborative networks in the field of production of knowledge, involving researchers from different regions and countries. In this sense we can say that a fundamental change is occurring in the geography of science, as research networks are expanding in all regions of the world. In this way, knowledge is better transferred and combined through collaboration, as co-authored articles are easily available and cover many countries and disciplines. The conjoint process between policy makers and researchers, this is to say between the fields of public policies and research networks, make possible the integration of perspectives and involves a process of co-design and creation in a collaborative way between the actors of the process.  If quality of life and well-being research results are included in policy making, they can make a significant contribution to the design and implementation of public policies.  In this way, the quality of life and well-being of the population could be improved and better, fairer societies with fewer inequalities could be built. This workshop is organized in three parts. In the first one we will explain the main concepts theoretically and debate the topics with the participants. In the second part, participants will work in groups to build proposals to facilitate the dialogue between policymakers and quality of life and well-being researchers, for the construction of public policies. Finally, the working groups will present their work, which will be debated to reach a conclusion.

Workshop Instructors: 

Graciela Tonon has a Ph.D. in Political Science (USAL, Argentina), Magister in Political Sciences (UNSAM, Argentina) and Bachelor Social Work. She did Postdoctoral studies at the University of Firenze, Italy.   She is Full Professor of Community Social Work and Children at Risk and Director of the Social Institute of Social Sciences UNI-COM at the National University of Lomas de Zamora. She is also Professor of Social Science Research Methodology and Quality of Life and Happiness and the Director of the Research Center in Social Sciences at the University of Palermo, Argentina. She received the ISQOLS Distinguished Service Award for Contributing Substantially to a Better Understanding of Quality-of-Life Studies in 2016. She is Editor of the International Quality of Life Handbook Series, Springer-ISQOLS;https://www.springer.com/series/8365/editors ; Associate Editor of Applied Research in Quality of Lifehttps://link.springer.com/journal/11482/editors ; Editor Collection Overcoming Youth Inequalities in the 21st Century: Public Policies and Methodology, Discover Global Societyhttps://link.springer.com/collections/dhbbaajcca ; Director of the Journal de Ciencias Sociales University of Palermo, Argentina.https://dspace.palermo.edu/ojs/index.php/jcs/about/editorialTeam. She has published extensively in English and Spanish: 31 books, 101 book chapters and 72 scientific articles. Currently she is Member of the Board of Directors of the International Society for Quality-of-Life Studies (ISQOLS) (2025-2026) member since 2000; Fellow of the Human Development and Capability Association (HDCA) (2013-2029) and Network Co-coordinator and past Secretary, and member of the Children Understanding of Well-being Network (CUWB) since its origin in 2015. She is also member of the Argentine Olympic Committee. She has directed 42 research projects, 83 researchers, 12 doctoral theses, 9 master's theses and 6 post-doctoral fellows.  She has participated as a speaker and panelist in 394 Conferences: 231 internationally and 163 nationally. Her fields of interest are Human capabilities, Quality of Life, Research Methodology, Young people, Children, Community, Inequalities, Public Policy.  ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1892-7958

Enrique Delamonica is the Senior Adviser Statistics and Monitoring for Child Poverty and Gender Equality in UNICEF. He is an economist and political scientist educated at the University of Buenos Aires, the Institute for Economic and Social Development, Columbia University, and the New School for Social Research. He was a policy analyst at UNICEF’s Headquarters, the Social and Economic Policy Regional Advisor at UNICEF’s Office for Latin America and The Caribbean, and the Chief of Social Policy and Gender Equality at UNICEF Nigeria. Throughout these years, he has focused on poverty reduction and human development strategies, social protection, socioeconomic disparities, child poverty, financing social services, equity, and the impact of macro-economic trends on child welfare. He has written and co-edited books and articles on economic development, children’s rights, social protection, macroeconomic trends impacting on children, socioeconomic disparities, the green economy, quality of life, social exclusion and discrimination, and financing social services - always focused on improving the lives of children, adolescents, and their families. He has also taught economics, international development, policy analysis, statistics, and research methods at, among other places, New York University, Columbia University, the New School for Social Research, and Saint Peter’s College (New Jersey). He was a Fellow of the Comparative Research Program on Poverty of the International Social Science Council between 2010 and 2018. Currently he is an ISQOLS member and member of the board of the Research Committee on Poverty, Social Welfare and Social Policy of the International Sociological Association.

REGISTER

Workshop Title:

To Vignettes and Beyond: How to Adjust Subjective Quality-of-Life Measures for Differences in Scale Use

Instructor: Dr. Kristen Cooper

Date and Time: Monday 21 July, 1:00pm-4:00pm 

Location: University of Luxembourg (room TBA)

Fee: 

• $35 USD (ISQOLS Members)/$20 USD (Student, Retired, Developing Country ISQOLS Members); 
• $50 USD (Non-ISQOLS members)/$35 USD (Student, Retired, Developing Country non-ISQOLS Members)

Workshop Description:

This workshop offers quality-of-life researchers practical guidance on dealing with interpersonal differences in use of the response scale – “scale use” – when analyzing or collecting self-reported well-being (SWB) survey data. The workshop focuses on a new method of the instructor and her coauthors, Benjamin et al. (2023), which uses calibration questions for scale-use adjustment. This method builds on the pioneering “anchoring vignette” approach (Kapteyn, Smith, and van Soest (2007, 2009); King, Murray, Salomon, and Tandon (2004)), with some alternative assumptions.

Brief outline of topics to be covered:

• ·        Overview of the vignette approach, in which respondents rate the SWB of hypothetical individuals described in vignettes, and researchers use these ratings to map respondents’ ratings of their own SWB onto a common scale.
• ·        Calibration questions (CQs): survey questions for which the state being rated is constant across individuals (including, but not limited to, vignettes). Discussion of how to design calibration questions when new SWB data are being collected.
• ·        Translation function: a mapping of one individual’s scale use to another’s. Based on empirical evidence that translation functions are roughly linear, and in a departure from the vignette literature, the Benjamin et al. method assumes that an individual’s scale use can be characterized by two parameters: an intercept-like “shifter” term and a slope-like “stretcher” term.
• ·        Discussion of the evidence for and implications of three different possibilities: general scale use (scale use is the same for all survey questions), specific scale use (scale use differs by dimension, such as life satisfaction vs. happiness), and categorical scale use (scale use is the same for a set of similar dimensions).
• ·        A high-level overview of the statistical models used for scale-use correction and the statistical tools – including R code – for using the CQ data to “correct” for scale use differences.
• ·        Example of scale-use correction in an important application: estimating the covariance of individual SWB with a demographic variable (for example, to study the effect of age on happiness).

Activities and Duration:

This is an in-person workshop which is three hours long (including breaks). It incorporates various pedagogical methodologies, including lectures, interactive discussions, and (optionally) hands-on practice using R or other software for scale-use correction.

Reading Material:

This workshop is based on various research articles, with a primary focus on the following:

• ·        Benjamin, Daniel J., Kristen Cooper, Ori Heffetz, Miles S. Kimball, and Jiannan Zhou. 2023. “Adjusting for Scale-Use Heterogeneity in Self-Reported Well-Being.” National Bureau of Economic Research, w31728.
• ·        Kapteyn, Arie, James P. Smith, and Arthur van Soest. 2007. “Vignettes and Self-Reports of Work Disability in the U.S. and the Netherlands.” American Economic Review 97 (1): 461–473.
• ·        Kapteyn, Arie, James P. Smith, and Arthur van Soest. 2010. “Life Satisfaction.” In International Differences in Well-Being: 70-104. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
• ·        King, Gary, Christopher J.L. Murray, Joshua A. Salomon, and Ajay Tandon. 2004. “Enhancing the Validity and Cross-Cultural Comparability of Measurement in Survey Research.” The American Political Science Review 98 (1): 191–207.

Workshop Instructor:

Dr. Kristen Cooper is an economist by training, a long-time researcher of well-being-related topics, and a recent member of ISQOLS. She is currently an Associate Professor of Economics at Gordon College, a liberal arts college in the Boston area where she also completed her undergraduate studies. She earned her Ph.D. in Applied Economics and Management at Cornell University. Together with co-authors Daniel J. Benjamin (UCLA), Ori Heffetz (HUJI, Cornell), and Miles S. Kimball (Univ. of Colorado), and others, she has been Co-Investigator on two NIH grants to develop methods for measuring well-being and its determinants over the life course. With these co-authors and others, she has contributed to many conferences and published related journal articles. Kristen specializes in interdisciplinary conferences and international settings. In 2019, she was a Fulbright U.S. Senior Scholar at the Universidad de La Laguna in Tenerife, Spain. Kristen looks forward to engaging with ISQOLS members and guests at this workshop, as we discuss methods to potentially improve the interpersonal comparability of self-reported quality-of-life measures.

REGISTER