Abstract
OBJECTIVE: Life satisfaction pertains to an individual's subjective evaluation of their life quality, grounded in their personal criteria. It stands as a crucial cognitive aspect of subjective wellbeing, offering a reliable gauge of a person's comprehensive wellbeing status. In this research, our objective is to develop a hybrid self-supervised model tailored for predicting individuals' life satisfaction in South Korea. METHODS: We employed the Busan Metropolitan City Social Survey Data in 2021, a comprehensive dataset compiled by the Big Data Statistics Division of Busan Metropolitan City. After preprocessing, our analysis focused on a total of 32,390 individuals with 51 variables. We developed the self-supervised pre-training TabNet model as a key component of this study. In addition, we integrated the proposed model with the Local Interpretable Model-agnostic Explanation (LIME) technique to enhance the ease and intuitiveness of interpreting local model behavior. RESULTS: The performance of our advanced model surpassed conventional tree-based ML models, registering an AUC of 0.7778 for the training set and 0.7757 for the test set. Furthermore, our integrated model simplifies and clarifies the interpretation of local model actions, effectively navigating past the intricate nuances of TabNet's standard explanatory mechanisms. CONCLUSION: Our proposed model offers a transparent understanding of AI decisions, making it a valuable tool for professionals in the social sciences and psychology, even if they lack expertise in data analytics.