BĂLTĂȚESCU Sergiu, BACTER Claudia

BUNĂSTAREA VĂZUTĂ PRIN OCHII COPIILOR ROMÂNI REZULTATELE STUDIULUI INTERNAȚIONAL „LUMEA COPIILOR” (ISCWeB)

---

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.