What is ACSA? It seems
to be an acronym for a lot of different things, but the particular ACSA I am
referring to is Anamnestic Comparative Self-Assessment. This is an approach to
measuring progress which was first suggested by Jan Bernheim about 30 years
ago.
The distinctive
feature of ACSA is that it asks survey respondents to rate their current
wellbeing by comparison with their memory of the best and worst periods of
their own lives (with the best period being given a rating of +5 and the worst
period being given a rating of -5).
ACSA is an alternative
to the conventional question which asks people to rate their current lives using
abstract universal anchors. For example, the Cantril scale gives ‘the best
possible life’ a rating of 10 and ‘the worst possible life’ a rating of zero.
In terms of measuring
progress, ACSA has the merit of using anchors that could reasonably be expected
to more stable over time than perceptions of the best possible life. As
explained in recent posts (here and here), when people are asked to rate their
own lives relative to the best possible life, they are likely to be making that
assessment relative to a moving target. If they see their own lives improving
in line with their perceptions of the best possible life, they can be expected
to give similar ratings to their lives in successive surveys. It should be
obvious to everyone that it is a mistake under those circumstances to interpret
stable ratings as implying an absence of progress.
A major study
comparing results obtained using ACSA and a conventional measure of life
satisfaction for a large number of adult hospital patients suggests that ACSA
is indeed less subject to biases of various kinds. For example, the results
obtained using ACSA were more responsive to a major objective change in the
prospects of end-stage liver disease patients following liver transplantation.
The conventional measure of life satisfaction did not capture adequately the impact
on wellbeing of the life-threatened situation of these patients prior to transplantation,
or the fact that transplantation restored them to an almost normal life. The
study is reported in Jan Bernheim et al, ‘The potential of anamnestic
comparative self-assessment (‘ACSA) to reduce bias in the measurement of
subjective well-being’, Journal of
Happiness Studies (2006). An ungated article providing a brief discussion
of ACSA is available here.
The potential
strengths of ACSA relative to conventional measures of life satisfaction are
most obvious where the focus of research is on changes in the wellbeing of
individuals over time. A potential weakness of ACSA arises in
comparing ratings of different individuals, even though research findings suggest that there are
common elements in memories of different people concerning the best and worst
periods of their lives (the best periods often involve such things as birth
of a child and the worst periods such things as unemployment). It
seems likely that many people in high-income countries would perceive that the worst periods in their lives were not as bad as those experienced by vast numbers other people in the world. They might also perceive that the best periods of
their lives were better than those of people with fewer opportunities.
One possible way to
combine the ACSA ratings of different people would be to place them on the same
scale as conventional ratings using the Cantril scale. When I did that for myself, I gave a rating of
8.5 to my current life, a rating of 9.5 to the best period of my life and a
rating of 6.0 to the worst period of my life. That implies an ACSA rating of about 2 [10*(8.5-6.0)/(9.5-6.0) – 5]. That is also the ACSA rating I gave to my current life when I asked myself the ACSA question directly. Such introspective
exercises don’t necessarily mean much, but this one suggests to me that the underlying
concepts used in ACSA are compatible with the Cantril scale. I urge other people to do the exercise to see if they also get sensible ACSA estimates.
As far as I can see there is no reason why
surveys could not ask people to give a rating to the best and worse periods of
their own lives on the Cantril scale, immediately after asking them to rate
their current lives on that scale. The Cantril scale is far from perfect as a methodology for making interpersonal comparisons of well-being, but the results it provides in that context seem to make more sense than in making comparisons over time. The calculation of ACSA scores in conjunction in longitudinal surveys using the Cantril question provides potential for development of meaningful measures of perceptions of progress.
I don’t know the answer
to the question I asked at the beginning of this post. More use should be made of ACSA. It seems to me that
including ACSA type questions in longitudinal studies, such as HILDA, has
potential to provide useful information.