Events And Well Being

This book is the first to take an in-depth examination of events and well-being, adopting a much-needed critical approach to the study of events. It uses empirical case studies to help us better understand how events foster positive well-being or counter negative well-being for event organisers, participants, spectators, volunteers and even non-attending local residents. While researchers have long understood socialisation as the major motivation to attend contemporary festivals and events, it is only just being acknowledged that well-being is also a key motivator. Those researching in the field of event studies are yet to clearly articulate "the how, why, where, and impacts of socialisation." This multidisciplinary book draws together empirical research across a range of event types and sizes, from music festivals to mega sports events, to provide a nuanced understanding of their contribution to the well-being of individuals and communities. Case studies are drawn from around the world and apply a diverse range of theoretical lenses to the conceptualisation of well-being as it applies to events and methodologies used to achieve research aims and objectives. This significant volume will be valuable reading for students and academics in the fields of sport studies, critical event studies, queer studies, cultural studies, tourism, music, sociology and end-of-life studies.

Subjective well-being refers to how people experience and evaluate their lives and specific domains and activities in their lives. This information has already proven valuable to researchers, who have produced insights about the emotional states and experiences of people belonging to different groups, engaged in different activities, at different points in the life course, and involved in different family and community structures. Research has also revealed relationships between people's self-reported, subjectively assessed states and their behavior and decisions. Research on subjective well-being has been ongoing for decades, providing new information about the human condition. During the past decade, interest in the topic among policy makers, national statistical offices, academic researchers, the media, and the public has increased markedly because of its potential for shedding light on the economic, social, and health conditions of populations and for informing policy decisions across these domains. Subjective Well-Being: Measuring Happiness, Suffering, and Other Dimensions of Experience explores the use of this measure in population surveys. This report reviews the current state of research and evaluates methods for the measurement. In this report, a range of potential experienced well-being data applications are cited, from cost-benefit studies of health care delivery to commuting and transportation planning, environmental valuation, and outdoor recreation resource monitoring, and even to assessment of end-of-life treatment options. Subjective Well-Being finds that, whether used to assess the consequence of people's situations and policies that might affect them or to explore determinants of outcomes, contextual and covariate data are needed alongside the subjective well-being measures. This report offers guidance about adopting subjective well-being measures in official government surveys to inform social and economic policies and considers whether research has advanced to a point which warrants the federal government collecting data that allow aspects of the population's subjective well-being to be tracked and associated with changing conditions.

The Sandvik, Diener, and Seidlitz (1993) paper is another that has received widespread attention because it documented the fact that self-report well-being scales correlate with a number of other methods of measuring the same concepts, such as with reports by knowledgeable “informants” (family and friends), expe- ence sampling measurement, and the memory for good versus bad life events. A single factor was found to underlie measures using different methods, and a n- ber of different well-being self-report measures were found to correlate with the non-self-report measures. Thus, although the self-report measures of well-being are imperfect, and can be in uenced by response artifacts, they have substantial validity as shown by their correlations with measurements based on alternative methods. Whereas the Pavot and Diener article reviewed the Satisfaction with Life Scale, the Lucas, Diener, and Larsen (2003) paper reviews various approaches to assessing positive emotions. As we wrote in the chapter in this volume in which we present new measures, we do not consider any of the existing measures of positive affect to be entirely acceptable for measuring subjective well-being in the affect area, and that is why we have created and validated a new measure.

Within events management, events are commonly categorised within two axes, size and content. Along the size axis events range between the small scale and local, through major events, which garner greater media interest, to internationally significant hallmark and mega events such as the Edinburgh Festival and the Tour de France. Content is frequently divided into three forms – culture, sport or business. However, such frameworks overlook and depoliticise a significant variety of events, those more accurately construed as protest. This book brings together new research and theories from around the world and across sociology, leisure studies, politics and cultural studies to develop a new critical pedagogy and critical theory of events. It is the first research monograph that deals explicitly with the concept of critical event studies (CES), the idea that it is impossible to explore and understand events without understanding the wider social, cultural and political contexts. It addresses questions such as can the occupation and reclamation of specific spaces by activists be understood as events within its framework? And is the activity of activists in these spaces a leisure activity? If those, and other similar activities, can be read as events and leisure, what does admitting them into the scope of events management and leisure studies mean for our understanding of them and how the study of events management is to be conceptualised? This title will be of interest to undergraduate and postgraduate students on events management and related courses and scholars interested in understanding the ways in which events are constructed by the social, the cultural and the political.

We are often told that 'money can't buy happiness'. But if money is not the answer then what is? This book considers this question by examining empirical data stretching back almost 10 years. Whereas previous concerns of individual well-being have been drawn towards the negative outcomes of life experiences, this book provides a new approach by directly addressing the circumstances under which high subjective well-being is experienced, often with surprising results. Drawing on nine years of panel data, the book examines demographic, social, spatial, health, domain satisfaction and socio-economic circumstances in a rich and complex longitudinal study, providing previously unknown information on factors associated with improved and sustained high well-being. It shows that subjective assessments of our circumstances are more important to well-being than our objective conditions and suggests that high well-being may be the key to improvements in people's subjective experience of a wide range of adverse (and other) life events. It also highlights that high levels of well-being are more likely to be associated with our social relationships and health status than with income or personal status, and that affluence is no guarantee to high subjective well-being and indeed may have negative consequences. The 21st century is seeing the emergence of a positive science, with a new focus on subjective well-being. This research adds new knowledge to the issues and debates which support the move towards a better understanding of the factors that promote subjective well-being. Such findings will be important to the international academic field as well as the national political arena where improving well-being has become a part of the government's agenda.

This authoritative volume reviews the breadth of current scientific knowledge on subjective well-being (SWB): its definition, causes and consequences, measurement, and practical applications that may help people become happier. Leading experts explore the connections between SWB and a range of intrapersonal and interpersonal phenomena, including personality, health, relationship satisfaction, wealth, cognitive processes, emotion regulation, religion, family life, school and work experiences, and culture. Interventions and practices that enhance SWB are examined, with attention to both their benefits and limitations. The concluding chapter from Ed Diener dispels common myths in the field and presents a thoughtful agenda for future research.

Shows the interconnections among the elements of well-being, how they cannot be considered independently, and provides readers with a research-based approach to improving all aspects of their lives.

What if the next global crisis is a mental health pandemic? It is here now. One-third of Americans have shown signs of clinical anxiety or depression, and the current state of suffering globally has risen significantly. The mental health pandemic manifests everywhere, not least in your workplace. As organizations around the world face health and social crises, as well as economic uncertainty, acknowledging and improving wellbeing in your workplace is more critical than ever. Increasingly, leaders and managers must support mental health and cultivate resilience in employees — not just increase engagement and performance. Based on more than 100 million Gallup global interviews, Wellbeing at Work shows you how to do just that. Coauthored by Gallup’s CEO and its Chief Workplace Scientist, Wellbeing at Work explores the five key elements of wellbeing — career, social, financial, physical and community — and how organizations can help employees and teams thrive in those elements. The book also gives leaders ideas and action items to help employees use their innate talents and strengths to thrive in each of the wellbeing elements. And Wellbeing at Work introduces a metric to report a person’s best possible life: Gallup Net Thriving, which will become the “other stock price” for organizations. In a world where work and life are more blended than ever, maximizing employee wellbeing takes on greater urgency. Wellbeing at Work shows leaders how to create a thriving and resilient culture. If you and your leaders don’t change the world, who will? Wellbeing at Work includes a unique code to take the CliftonStrengths assessment, which reveals your top five strengths.