Does Wealth Enhance Life Satisfaction for People Who are Materially Deprived? Exploring the Association among the Orang asli of Peninsular Malaysia

Abstract

indigenous, poverty, satisfaction with life scale, subjective well-being, wealth,

Psychometric Evaluation of the Malay Satisfaction With Life Scale

“…These data are further supported by the parameter estimates of the CFAs, and is generally consistent with previous work showing that local versions of the SWLS has high internal consistency (e.g., Arrindell et al 1999;Gouveia et al in press;Hultell and Gustavsson 2008;Oishi 2006;Wu and Yao 2006). Our finding of high internal consistency also stands in contrast to the work of Howell et al (2006), who reported that the SWLS (in question-format) had low internal reliability among an Orang Asli sample in Peninsular Malaysia.…”

“…The suboptimal internal consistency reported by Howell et al (2006), however, was likely caused by factors specific to their sample and difficulties with their translation of the SWLS. Specifically, their sample of Orang Asli had a very low level of formal education (which is not representative of urban, or even, non-tribal rural groups in Malaysia), may not have been fluent in Bahasa Malaysia (Malay), and may have been unfamiliar with the methods of psychological testing.…”

“…To be sure, a number of studies have used the SWLS among Malay-speaking populations, but these have either used English versions of the scale (e.g., Swami et al 2007) or do not report psychometric data (e.g., Chua and Abdul 2001). One recent study has sought to overcome this dearth in the literature: among a sample of Orang Asli (an indigenous tribe in Peninsular Malaysia), Howell et al (2006) reported that a Malay version of the SWLS had low internal consistency (Cronbach's a = 0.60), which did not improve after one item that had low item-total correlations was dropped.…”

“…Specifically, their sample of Orang Asli had a very low level of formal education (which is not representative of urban, or even, non-tribal rural groups in Malaysia), may not have been fluent in Bahasa Malaysia (Malay), and may have been unfamiliar with the methods of psychological testing. For instance, Howell et al (2006) reported that their sample had difficulty understanding varying degrees of agreement or disagreement, which necessitated translation of each of the five SWLS items as questions rather than statements. Given these limitations, it remains unclear whether the SWLS can be considered a valid measure of life satisfaction among more mainstream Malay-speaking populations.…”

The Relation Between Life Satisfaction and the Material Situation: A Re-Evaluation Using Alternative Measures

“…Böhnke and Delhey 1999a;Böhnke 2005;Møller 2007). There are also examples where smaller lists of items have been used as proxies for wealth (Howell et al 2005). 6 In fact there is one example (Böhnke and Delhey 1999b), where an indicator for deprivation based poverty and income are both included in a multivariate model explaining satisfaction with the standard of living as well as satisfaction with some other life domains.…”