Type D Personality, Stress Level, Life Satisfaction, and Alcohol Dependence in Older Men

Alcohol consumption among older adults is becoming an increasing public health problem due to the rapidly growing elderly population. There is a theory that Type D personality is positively correlated with alcohol dependence. The study aimed to assess the style of coping with stress, emotions and anxiety in elder men addicted to alcohol and the relationship between the above. The study included 170 men aged 60 years and older (mean age - 63 ± 3.1 years) addicted to alcohol staying in the Department of Alcohol Addiction Therapy for Men. They were tested with the questionnaire sheet and the following scales: Perceived Family Wealth (PFW), Family Affluence Scale (FAS), Cantril's Ladder of Life Scale, Satisfaction with Life Scale, Type D Personality Scale-14 (DS14), and the 10-item Perceived Stress Scale (PSS-10). The respondents' wealth on a scale of 1–5 points was assessed on avg. 3.1 ± 0.2. The above was confirmed by the results of the FAS scale study, where the respondents obtained an average of 3.9 ± 1.9 (min. 1, max. 8), which proves their average level of affluence. The evaluation of the satisfaction with life using Cantril's Ladder showed that the respondents were also satisfied with life on average (on average 5.5 ± 1.9). The assessment of life satisfaction using the Satisfaction with Life Scale (SWLS) scale allowed for the conclusion that the respondents were very dissatisfied with their lives (mean 17.2 ± 4.9). The evaluation of the measurement of perceived stress (PSS-10 scale) showed that the respondents obtained an average of 23.5 ± 3.7, and on the sten scale, a mean of 7.7 ± 0.98, which proves a high level of perceived stress. The study using the DS14 scale showed that the respondents were in the negative emotionality (NE) subscale - 17.4 ± 4.5 points, and in the HS scale - 16.2 ± 3.2, which proves that they can be classified as a Type D personality. The participants were very dissatisfied with their lives, with a high perceived stress and Type D personality.

Conceptual Disruption

In research using self-report measures, there is little attention paid to how participants interpret concepts; instead, researchers often assume definitions are shared, universal, or easily understood. I discuss the self-anchored ladder, adapted from Cantril’s ladder, which is a procedure that simultaneously collects a participant’s self-reported rating and their interpretation of that rating. Drawing from a study about sexual satisfaction that included a self-anchored ladder, four analyses are presented and discussed in relation to one another: (1) comparisons of sexual satisfaction scores, (2) variations of structures participants applied to the ladder, (3) frequency of terms used to describe sexual satisfaction, and (4) thematic analysis of “best” and “worst” sexual satisfaction. These analytic strategies offer researchers a model for how to incorporate self-anchored ladder items into research designs as a means to draw out layers of meaning in quantitative, qualitative, and mixed methods data. I argue that the ladder invites the potential for conceptual disruption by prioritizing skepticism in survey research and bringing greater attention to how social locations, histories, economic structures, and other factors shape self-report data. I also address issues related to the multiple epistemological positions that the ladder demands. Finally, I argue for the centrality of epistemological self-reflexivity in critical feminist psychological research. Additional online materials for this article are available on PWQ’s website at http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/suppl/10.1177/0361684317725985

Can Marginal Rates of Substitution Be Inferred from Happiness Data? Evidence from Residency Choices

We survey 561 students from US medical schools shortly after they submit choice rankings over residencies to the National Resident Matching Program. We elicit (i) these choice rankings, (ii) anticipated subjective well-being (SWB) rankings, and (iii) expected features of the residencies (such as prestige). We find substantial differences between choice and anticipated-SWB rankings in the implied trade-offs between residency features. In our data, evaluative SWB measures (life satisfaction and Cantril's Ladder) imply trade-offs closer to choice than does affective happiness (even time-integrated), and as close as do multimeasure SWB indices. We discuss implications for using SWB data in applied work. (JEL D12, I31)