Individuals routinely rate themselves higher than their peers on a number of attributes and capabilities, including their satisfaction with life. However, the construct validity of this above-average effect requires specific psychometric properties of ratings of one's contentment and ratings of others' perceived contentment. This article tests…

This collection of diverse conference papers discusses work in the traditions of factor analysis, ordinal psychometrics, structural equations, and some special purpose models for the analysis of change. It is a useful source, but does little to link the psychometric framework to general developments in statistics and other disciplines. (SLD)