Claudio Thieme

Life Domain Satisfactions as Predictors of Overall Life Satisfaction Among Workers: Evidence from Chile

This article examines the subjective antecedents of life satisfaction of workers. Adopting a ‘bottom-up’ perspective, we assessed the unique influence that satisfaction with multiple life domains have on evaluative judgments of overall life satisfaction. Based on a nationwide sample of 530 Chilean workers, we simultaneously tested the effects of seven life domain satisfactions that have been consistently included in extant models of life satisfaction and subjective well-being. These were satisfaction with health, financial situation, social relationships, one’s self-worth, leisure-time, family, and work. Having controlled for age and gender, results showed that satisfaction with one’s financial situation was the dominant predictor of overall life satisfaction of workers, with a weight of .36. Satisfaction with family, work, and health had effects of .25, .14, and .14, respectively. Interestingly, satisfaction with one’s self-worth, leisure-time, and social relationships did not have statistically significant effects on life satisfaction, although the first two showed t values near the critical value.

School Choice and Market Imperfections Evidence From Chile

The purpose of this study is to inform public policies aimed at improving parental school-choice processes. The study estimates both the utility obtained by parents from different school attributes and the effective utility obtained with the actual school choice made by parents. The difference between both types of utilities provides a panorama on how market imperfections affect the general equilibrium of the education market. The results show that parents have different preference functions depending on their socioeconomic level. Nevertheless, regardless of the socioeconomic level, in all preference functions teacher performance remains highly significant. The findings suggest that even if parents would want the schools that serve their children to fulfill a series of academic criteria, they cannot use academic attributes when choosing a school for their children. This seems to be the result of either lack of information or because there is no quality alternative available to them.

Efecto de diferentes métodos de puntuación sobre la fiabilidad, validez y puntos de corte de la escala de depresión del Centro para Estudios Epidemiológicos (CES-D)

Resumen es: Este estudio compara el efecto de cuatro metodos de puntuacion para la Escala de Depresion del Centro para Estudios Epidemiologicos (CES-D), sobre la fia...

Value added, educational accountability approaches and their effects on schools’ rankings: Evidence from Chile ☆

Value added models have been proposed to analyze different aspects related to school effectiveness on the basis of student growth. There is consensus in the literature about the need to control for socioeconomic status and other contextual variables at student and school level in the estimation of value added, for which the methodologies employed have largely relied on hierarchical linear models. However, this approach is problematic because results are based on comparisons to the school’s average—implying no real incentive for performance excellence. Meanwhile, activity analysis models to estimate school value added have been unable to control for contextual variables at both the student and school levels. In this study we propose a robust frontier model to estimate contextual value added which merges relevant branches of the activity analysis literature, namely, metafrontiers and partial frontier methods. We provide an application to a large sample of Chilean schools, a relevant country to study due to the reforms made to its educational system that point out to the need of accountability measures. Results indicate not only the general relevance of including contextual variables but also how they contribute to explaining the performance differentials found for the three types of schools—public, privately-owned subsidized, and privately-owned fee-paying. Also, the results indicate that contextual value added models generate school rankings more consistent with the evaluation models currently used in Chile than any other type of evaluation models.

Spanish Version of the Satisfaction with Life Scale: Validation and Factorial Invariance Analysis in Chile

The aim of this study is to: (1) examine the psychometric properties of the Spanish version of the Satisfaction with Life scale (SWLS) on a representative sample of the Chilean population (N = 1,500); (2) test the factorial invariance of the SWLS across gender and employment status (henceforth status); and (3) provide normative data of the SWLS for Chile. Results suggest that the Spanish version of the SWLS is a valid and reliable instrument for measuring global life satisfaction in Chile and for comparison across gender and status. Confirmatory factor analysis shows support, across all groups, for a modified single-factor structure of the SWLS that allows error terms of items 1 and 2 to correlate (GFI > .98; RMSEA .99; RMSEA < .06). Metric invariance holds for gender (ΔCFI = 0; RMSEA = .051) and status (Δχ2 = 23.93, nonsignificant; ∆CFI = 0; RMSEA = .045). Scalar invariance holds for gender and some status combinations; partial scalar invariance holds for the rest. Mean levels of life satisfaction can be compared across gender and status, albeit cautiously for status combinations for which scalar invariance does not hold.

Self-employment as a moderator between work and life satisfaction

Purpose The correlation between work and life satisfaction varies substantially across studies, suggesting that the strength of the relationship may depend on the studied population and its circumstances. The purpose of this paper is to assess the strength of the relationship in the context of Chile and the moderator effect of self-employment (SE), whether a worker is self-employed or on a salary. Design/methodology/approach Based on the idea that work plays a more central role in the life of a self-employed person than in that of a salaried worker, the authors hypothesized that the strength of the relationship between work and life satisfaction will be stronger for the former. The measures used in this study were part of a large questionnaire administered to investigate several characteristics of the Chilean population. The authors used multiple regression analysis to test the moderator effect of SE on the strength of the relationship between work satisfaction and life satisfaction. Findings The results ...