Study title

Full edition for scientific use. PUMA Surveys consist of separate modules designed and prepared by different principle investigators. This PUMA Survey consists of three modules. Fieldwork was conducted by Statistics Austria.MODULE 1 (Ivo Ponocny, Eduard Brandstätter, Christian Weismayer). Self-ratings of life satisfaction and happiness often tend to disclose some harm and mischief people actually experience in life (see Staudinger, 2000, “happiness paradox”, Cummins & Nistico, 2002, “positivity bias”, and Ponocny, Weismayer, Dressler, & Stross, 2017). Therefore, an alternative classification called “narrated well-being” (NWB) was developed by the latter authors which seems to more directly reflect the negative circumstances in people’s lives, as tested on the basis of 500 quality-of-life interviews. However, this rating scheme could only be applied to external ratings of life narratives, but not to self-ratings, a gap to be filled by the present report. Similarly, the assessment of the most influential well- and ill-being drivers via open-ended questions – leaving it to the citizens which aspects of life they want to tell about – was not assessed in a large-scale assessment framework with a representative sampling frame. Furthermore, the question why in part drastic negative circumstance do not produce more negative self-ratings drew the attention on the role of obligation and burden, with the suspicion that persons with obligations tend to emphasize how well they cope with their challenges rather than evaluate based on their personal happiness. If this is true, then there is an ambiguity regarding the meaning of those self-ratings, with the potential for misinterpretation by researchers. These thoughts, if correct, will particularly apply to persons with responsibility for persons dependent on them, such as children and teenagers, and persons giving informal care. Consequently, the research goals are to i) determine the extent of burdensome circumstances,...