We propose to create a new NIA Roybal Center at Princeton University called the Center for Research on Experience and Well Being (CREW), with the overall objectives of (1) developing new methods for the measurement of well-being and health and (2) using them to better understand and document the experience of aging. We propose that a shift to a bottom-up conceptualization of well-being will enhance our ability to understand numerous facets of the aging process by clearly separating actual experiences of daily life from the cognitive processes that give rise to reports of life satisfaction or overall happiness. Application of bottom-up methods will also improve our understanding of apparent anomalies in self-reported well-being and health and provide insights into the process of adaptation to changing circumstances. These new methods allow a detailed analysis of the contribution of different circumstances (e.g., chronic disease, widowhood) and situations (e.g., working, socializing with friends) to the overall quality of life, and of how these contributions change over a person's life cycle. The combination of measurements of the affective experience of situations and activities (e.g., commuting, housework) with measurements of the time spent by the population in these activities, currently collected by the Department of Labor Statistics, could eventually contribute to the development of an experimental system of National Well-being Accounts. The proposed pilot work develops the methodological and conceptual basis of subsequent proposals. As per the goals of the Roybal RFA, we will not definitively answer all of the questions addressed in the proposal, but will collect pilot data to support subsequent large-scale studies.
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