SODAS Data Discussion #3 (Fall 2024)

Copenhagen Center for Social Data Science (SODAS) aspires to be a resource for all students and researchers at the Faculty of Social Sciences. We therefore invite researchers across the faculty to present ongoing research projects, project applications or just loose ideas that relate to the subject of social data science.

Two researchers will present their work. The rules are simple: Short presentations of ten minutes are followed by twenty minutes of debate. No papers will be circulated beforehand, and the presentations cannot be longer than five slides.

Discussion 1

Presenter: Marten Appel

Title: Secrets of a Good Life

Abstract: 

Whether a person evaluates their life as good can be measured in a multitude of ways. Two common ones are whether a person is satisfied with and/or perceives their life to have meaning. A recently proposed third measure, psychological richness, states that people also value that they lead interesting lives.

The presented project seeks to 1. investigate if this three-factor structure holds and 2. to examine the most important correlates of each dimension.

We answer the first question using factor analysis on a large Danish sample. The second question, which will be the focus of the presentation, is investigated using preregistered linear models as well as a set of machine-learning models. The linear models inform us about prespecified expectations, while we use the machine-learning models to evaluate a large number of features based both on questionnaire as well as register data.