About me:

Editorial activity

• Social Indicators Research (Springer Sociology Journal), member in the editorial board – since 2005
• Journal of Social Research & Policy, Senior editor, since 2010
• Sociologie Românească (Romanian Sociology), Editor-in-Chief, since 2010
• International Journal of Happiness and Development (Inderscience), member in the editorial board, since 2011
• Journal of Happiness and Well-Being, member in the editorial board, since 2012
• Calitatea vieţii (Quality of life), member in the editorial board – since 2008
• Inovatia socială (Social innovation), member in the editorial board, – since 2008

Memberships in scientific societies

• International Society for Quality-of-Life Studies (ISQOLS), www.isqols.org (nominated for Board of Directors, 2005-2006) – since 2004
• International Sociological Association (ISA) - since 2010
• European Sociological Association (ESA)   - since 2011
• International Society for Child Indicators (ISCI) - since 2011
• Romanian Sociological Association – since 2000

Research groups

• International Wellbeing Group - Primary Researcher www.deakin.edu.au/research/acqol/inter_wellbeing/index.htm
• Center for the study of Social Transformations, University of Oradea
• Romanian Network of Experts in Social Development (REPEDES)
• World Database of Happiness - Scale Calibration Study, Co-investigator

Teaching (graduate courses) 

• Social Indicators and Evaluation of the Quality of Life
• Quality of Working Life
• Social Statistics
• Culture and communication
• Advertising
• The image of the organization
• Public relations

(vezi pagina Cursurilor de master)

Teaching (undergraduate courses)

• Quality of Life
• Sociological Paradigms
• Sociology of Contemporary Culture
• History of Sociology
• Advertising Techniques

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Ongoing projects

Encyclopedia of quality of life (Editor-in-Chief: Alex Michalos)

Member in the editorial board, since 2009
http://refworks.springer.com/mrw/index.php?id=2801

Child indicators 

Higher Education for Social Cohesion – Cooperative Research and Development in a Cross-border area

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Research interests:

(see also my complete List of Works)

Social indicators, quality of life, social change, sociology of transition

In my research I addressed some of the most debated issues in subjective well-being. The proposal for my bachelor degree dissertation was published in the Romanian scholarly journal “Quality of Life” under the title: Influence of subjective factors on the perception of quality of life.

In my second article printed in 1999 I was reporting the discovery of a regularity I called “backward sloping curve of subjective well-being”. That is, when people are asked to evaluate their subjective well-being and that of others (their families, friends, neighbors, peoples from town and peoples from country), the closer peoples are from the respondent, the more their subjective well-being is evaluated as higher (see a presentation in: Media, climate of opinion and subjective well-being). I tested this regularity on several samples, including at national level.

Between 1999 and 2006 I followed a doctoral program in sociology at the University of Bucharest. I was especially preoccupied by the methodological problems of using subjective well-being as a resource for modeling societal outputs of post-communist transition. These pursuits took me to make critical approaches to theories and methodologies in the field.

I addressed the Problems of transforming scales of life satisfaction, and I proposed the use of latent growth curves to model societal changes in subjective well-being (Stability of Happiness in a Changing Society: A Latent Growth Analysis on a Romanian Panel Data).

I explored the influence on subjective well-being of various factors, some of them not studied before: public mood (Mass-media, climate of opinion and subjective well-being), trust in institutions (Trust in Institutions and Well-Being: a State of the Art, Confidence in Government and Happiness in EU and US, and justice beliefs (Justice beliefs in post-communist countries and subjective well-being. A European comparative study).

As a result, I presented multiple evaluations of subjective well-being in post-communist countries using various types of subjective well-being measures - simple (Quality of life in Romania, Transition is over, wait to see the benefits: a comparative evaluation of the effects of post-communist transition on life satisfaction) and complex scales like International Wellbeing Index (Subjective wellbeing in a post-communist country. Romania’s international wellbeing index, (with R.A. Cummins)). Along with these approaches I studied well-being of different socio-demographic groups like adolescents (Sports Participation and Subjective Well-being of Adolescents: Mediation of Self-esteem and Leisure Satisfaction), and immigrants (Subjective well-being of immigrants in Europe and their evaluation of societal conditions. An exploratory study)

Other research interests

• Sociology of adolescence
  
• Modernization theory
• Values,
• Poverty and inequality
• Social development indicators.