MANILA, Philippines — Some 86% of Filipinos rated their lives positively in the last quarter of 2018, the Social Weather Stations (SWS) announced Tuesday.
SWS said respondents were asked to place the past two weeks of their present lives on a scale from -5 to +5, where -5 means “as bad as the worst period personally experienced in my life” and +5 means “as good as the best period personally experienced in my life.”
From this, SWS said 86% rated their present lives positively, 4% rated their present lives neutral (0), while the remaining 10% rated their present lives negatively.
SWS explained that this gave an Anamnestic Comparative Self-Assessment (ACSA) score of +2.60.
While the mean score remained positive, it’s lower than the +2.82 score achieved in the last quarter of 2017.
SWS said that the mean ACSA was highest in Balance Luzon in terms of area, among females in terms of sex, among those in the middle-to-upper classes in terms of class, among those in the 18 to 24 years old bracket in terms of age, and among college graduates in terms of education.
The 2018 Social Weather Survey was conducted from Dec. 16 to 19, using face-to-face interviews of 1,440 adults nationwide, with sampling error margins of ±2.6% for national percentages.
On ACSA
According to SWS, anamnestic means “based on memory” as it “anchored on the respondents’ memories of their personal best and worst times in the past.”
SWS said that the December 2018 survey results for ACSA and for “satisfaction with life” and “happiness” are positively related to each other.
The mean ACSA is +3.29 among those “very satisfied with life,” +2.55 among those “fairly satisfied,” +1.47 among those “not very satisfied,” and +0.88 among those “not at all satisfied.”
Meanwhile, the mean ACSA is +3.37 among those who are “very happy,” +2.47 among those who are “fairly happy,” +0.94 among those who are “not very happy,” and +0.06 among those who are “not at all happy.”
In terms of poverty, mean ACSA was +2.36 among those who rated themselves as “poor,” compared to +2.83 among those who rated themselves as “non-poor.”
While in terms of hunger, mean ACSA was +1.96 for those who had experienced some involuntary hunger, and +2.67 among those who had not experienced hunger.
/atm