Filtered Life Satisfaction and Its Socioeconomic Determinants in Hong Kong

Filtering the measure of life satisfaction through the bias of social desirability and response styles would furnish an adequate
analysis of socioeconomic impacts on the filtered life satisfaction. The filtering is necessary because social desirability
and the response styles of acquiescence, extremity, and centrality are likely to contaminate the measure of life satisfaction.
Based on survey data from 1,993 Hong Kong Chinese adults, the study applied the filtering on the Personal Wellbeing Index
to obtain filtered life satisfaction. Results indicated the bias of social desirability and response styles to justify the
filtering. They further manifested that socioeconomic impacts on filtered life satisfaction were somewhat different from those
on unfiltered life satisfaction. Some of the impacts on unfiltered life satisfaction were attributable to the contamination
of life satisfaction by social desirability. Eventually, family income per capita appeared to contribute to filtered life
satisfaction; and education and receiving public benefits tended to diminish the satisfaction. The results imply that while
the availability of resources explains some of the findings, it does not provide the only or dominant explanation.