The Social Activity/Subjective Well-Being Relation

Meta-analytic techniques were used to synthesize findings on the social activity/subjective well-being relation. We chose zero-order and first order associations as our dependent variables and several different measure, sample, and study quality characteristics as our independent variables. We found that social activity is positively and significantly related to subjective well-being. Contrary to activity theory, informal activities and activities with friends were not related to subjective well-being consistently more strongly than were formal activities and activities with neighbors. In addition, the remaining measure, sample, and study quality characteristics were not adequate predictors of variation in activity/subjective well-being associations.

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