Abstract
The measurement of subjective well-being is an important topic in society, since the support of good life, happiness, satisfaction, or attainment of well-being should be the goal of any democratic government. The main problem is how to measure subjective well-being - whether through a single question or as part of multi-item battery, as a multidimensional concept - in order to be valid, reliable and primarily comparable? Both methods are used in the European Social Survey (ESS).
The measurement with one question has been repeated in each round since 2002, the measurement from a multidimensional perspective was included in the third and sixth rounds. Are the results of both methods comparable? What are their advantages and disadvantages? Is any method more appropriate?