Transformations  in
Business & Economics

VARIATIONS AND SIMILARITIES BETWEEN EMPIRICAL RESEARCH METHODS IN QUALITY OF LIFE STUDIES
George Serban-Oprescu, Anca-Teodora Serban-Oprescu, Grigore Ioan Pirosca

ABSTRACT. Over the last decades a significant number of economists and social scientists focused their attention on quality of life studies. Their research produced a considerable amount of literature that might be classified under three broad perspectives: happiness approach, capabilities approach and behavioral economics. Usually, these three approaches are considered to be distinct research programmes with their own hard core theories and assumptions, heuristics and protective belt. Nevertheless, one can easily find a series of reasons to question the validity of the research methodologies employed by these three research programmes, since the integration of the non-monetary dimension of life into a consistent measure of quality of life could be a very daunting task. In this context, the aim of this paper is to test the consistency of the results obtained within the three approaches and to assess the measure in which these results display a ripple effect if correlated. In order to achieve this aim an empirical study was conducted among 100 students and employees aged between 18 and 45 years that were willing to complete an online form consisting of10 queries about their own perceived happiness, quality of life and dissatisfaction. The results of various correlation analyses reveal that respondents are using similar standards to assess happiness and quality of life, but the standards are altered when it comes to evaluate the dissatisfaction level of certain quality of life dimensions. This insight seems to lead to the following conclusion that happiness and the capabilities approaches are more similar in terms of research methods since they render almost the same empirical results, whereas the approach of behavioral economics provides a different set of empirical results.

KEYWORDS: quality of life, happiness, capabilities approach, behavioral economics, correlation analysis.

JEL classification: B41, D03, I30.