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A Meta-Analysis of the Effectiveness of Randomized Controlled Positive Psychological Interventions on Subjective and Psychological Well-Being

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Abstract

We conducted a meta-analysis to analyze the effects of randomized controlled positive psychological interventions on subjective and psychological well-being. Our aim was to extend previous research by following a more comprehensive approach in the selection of studies, by including new moderators, by focusing on adult nonclinical populations and increases in well-being, and by comparing the effects of interventions targeting subjective and psychological well-being (i.e., hedonism or eudemonia) or a combination of the two. In contrast to previous analyses, we compared effects on different outcomes and contrasted effects of technology-assisted interventions with traditional ones. We included 68 randomized controlled studies of nonclinical populations with a total of 16,085 participants. The results showed that positive psychological interventions do increase well-being. The overall effect size (Cohen’s d) was 0.23, but it was 0.08 for psychological well-being, 0.22 for subjective well-being, and 0.43 when the studies targeted both types of well-being. Longer interventions showed stronger immediate effects than shorter ones, and interventions based on traditional methods were more effective than those that used technology-assisted methods. With respect to short-term outcomes, there was a negative relation to age, but when long-term effects were considered, the relation to age was positive. Overall, we also found evidence of long-term effects of the interventions.

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Notes

  1. Bolier et al. (2013) reported the effect sizes in a different metric (r). We converted them to Cohen’s d for consistency and ease of comparison (Cumming and Calin-Jageman 2016).

  2. Both Hendriks et al. (2018) and Hendriks et al. (2019) reported the effect sizes in Hedge’s g. We converted them to Cohen’s d for consistency and ease of comparison (Cumming and Calin-Jageman 2016).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, University of Bamberg, Bamberg, Germany

    Selda Koydemir

  2. Guidance and Psychological Counseling Program, Middle East Technical University, Northern Cyprus Campus, KKTC, via Mersin 10, Turkey

    Aslı Bugay Sökmez

  3. Department of Psychology, University of Bamberg, Bamberg, Germany

    Astrid Schütz

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  1. Selda Koydemir
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  3. Astrid Schütz
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Koydemir, S., Sökmez, A.B. & Schütz, A. A Meta-Analysis of the Effectiveness of Randomized Controlled Positive Psychological Interventions on Subjective and Psychological Well-Being. Applied Research Quality Life 16, 1145–1185 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11482-019-09788-z

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