The Day of the Week Effect on Subjective Well-Being in the European Social Survey

Abstract

Abstract. In large-scale social surveys, respondents are typically interviewed on different days of the week. Because previous research established systematic daily fluctuations of people’s mood, it was hypothesized that subjective well-being ratings might be similarly affected by the day the interview takes place. Therefore, an individual-participant meta-analysis of 221 representative samples from the European Social Survey including 408,637 participants is presented. The random-effects meta-analysis found a negligible day of the week effect on life satisfaction and happiness ratings, even after accounting for selection and interviewer effects. Although significantly different ratings were observed on Sundays, the size of the obtained effects was trivial. These findings provide little evidence that the interview day has a meaningful impact on subjective well-being research in cross-sectional, large-scale studies.