Avenues to Flourishing: Exploring What Context and Discrepancy Can Teach Us About Well-Being

Abstract

This dissertation examined how the concepts of context and discrepancy could expand our knowledge of the intricacies of well-being. While there is a long history of research on well-being that emphasizes different definitions, models and elements of well-being, there have been numerous implications and open questions within the literature that had gone nearly unexamined for decades. Using the PERMA model of well-being as a lens to examine these untested questions/implications, a greater understanding of the mechanics of well-being was established. This greater understanding has implications on how well-being can be understood, measured and promoted in others. I accomplished this through two studies. In study 1, I created a context-specific approach to measuring the PERMA elements that asked participants to rate their well-being elements across the work and home contexts. We also used existing research to generate discrepancy metrics that represented the level of imbalance between well-being elements. Results supported our measurement approach, replicating factor structure and psychometric qualities seen in past PERMA measurement studies. We examined the relative importance of the PERMA elements and found that, depending on the outcome in question, PERMA elements were different in how they predicted important outcomes. It was also found that discrepancies between well-being elements do have some role in predicting these outcomes as well. Based on the findings from Study 1, I expanded the scope of measurement approach to include three contexts, school, work and home. I then expanded our relative importance models to include a contextual (e.g., work, school, home) breakdown of PERMA elements. These models revealed a complex interplay between context, element and outcome that suggests that simply maximizing all the PERMA elements equally may not be the most effective approach towards promoting various benefits associated with well-being. This study also provided some of the earliest supporting evidence for the contextual approach to measuring well-being, and the first to examine the relative importance of PERMA elements with context in mind. Overall, these studies expand well-being research without needing to create an entirely new multidimensional model or definition of well-being. The methodological advancements presented in these studies and the insights they have immediate implications for policy and practice across a diverse range of fields, including social sciences, workplaces, economic policy, and more. Finally, the theoretical implications of this work will hopefully inspire new approaches to researching well-being that will go on to inform others in their own quests for well-being.