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. Specifically, in the sixth round was firstly introduced a new theoretical model for measuring subjective well-being.
In order to be able to reliably compare countries with each other, the model must achieved a certain level of equivalence. In my paper, I will focus on comparison of both methods, I will show their advantages and disadvantages and especially I will present the results of my analysis in which I tested this theoretical model from the sixth round ESS.