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One of the well-established findings in positive psychology is that many of the important determinants of happiness and life satisfaction are social. A recently-published study by James Fowler and Nicholas Christakis reinforces this finding by showing that happiness spreads through social networks. Read More
Just recently a friend from
Just recently a friend from Thailand e-mailed me one of the many written news coverages of Fowler and Christaki's research. If it was anything like what one of your Deans had read then I wouldn't be surprised that s/he wasn't informed about the non-insignificance happiness impact by coworkers.
The irony is that the the article something like 8 pages short and they really only had to take the results from the abstract and communicate that information to their readers.
I'd love to see more research done in this area that could maybe help identify trends within other constructs and in particular how they relate to each other.
Bogus Results from Academia Psychologists
These kinds of self-reporting studies all suffer from the same defects, the respondents personal interpretation what gets asked and the choices of answers.
Thus, the results cannot be projected upon a universe of categorized others.
Without operational definition of words, all that happens is the worthless collection of opinions of respondents.
Had the researchers told the respondents the meaning of words, perhaps such a study might prove fruitful.
Most don't know that 'life' means the record of one's living, that 'happy' (almost always confused with glad) means taking haps as and trying to maximize one's response to them.
Worse, is asking for meaningless comparison to others as seen in "...just as good as other people" since it's impossible for the respondent to know what all others do in every moment.
Academia psychologists fail almost always in their research because of bad design.
Addressing Ketch Rudder's Concerns
People don't need to be told what it means to be happy. They know if they are happy and generally they have an idea what it takes to be happy and/or what is important in life. While we all make this evaluation, researchers break happiness/subjective well-being (SWB) into a combination of the sum of one's positive affect, minus the negative affect, and one's satisfaction with life (plus flourishing according to Diener).
People don't need a working definition such as this to evaluation their own happiness/SWB in their own life. As Seligman put it "whoever lives inside a person's skin" is the final judge of their own happiness.
A number of questionnaires have been shown to be fairly good at measuring happiness/SWB. The important criteria for the creation of a good questionnaire includes: (1) making sure that it actually measure what it was intended to measure (validity), (2) that it can do so across target populations and time (reliability), and (3) do so with large representative populations.
Questionnaires are likely here to stay. They are a good first step for inquiry and compared to most other measures they are relatively cheap. Nevertheless I think there is a need for other measures to provide additional information or further verification of what questionnaires have found. They could include a variety of biological measures, random experience sampling throughout the day with the help of electronic devices, informant reports, memory recall tests, listing daily thoughts and so forth.
To my knowledge happiness/SWB measures have usually 5 to 10 point Likert scales as possible choices anchored at low and high or at opposite ends of the given spectrum. You can look at the "Satisfaction with Life Scale" by Diener or "General Happiness Questionnaire" by Lyubomirsky (originally called Subjective Happiness Scale) at www.authentichappiness.com.
As to your critic of meaningless comparisons. When we make social comparisons we compare our perception of ourselves to our perception of others. These comparisons are based on what comes to our mind at a given moment drawing from the pool of people we know and how we see ourselves. This is what questionnaires are trying to tap into. They surely don't ask individuals "to know what all others do in every moment."
Hans Rippel needs to complete a Research Methods course
Hans Rippel amuses when he titles his reply post "Addressing Ketch Rudder's Concerns".
I have no concerns. I stated absolute fact about methodological flaws of Academia studies in psychology.
The results of opinion survey cannot get projected to a universe if respondents lack clear and undifferentiated meaning in the questions.
Clearly, Hans Rippel does not get scientific public opinion research.
With the flawed methods that Hans Rippel approves, all the researchers are doing is collecting random opinions of respondents.
Because operational definition is not being used in the collection, none of the results can be projected. This is methodological fact.
Goodness ...
It seems to me that one good way to determine if people are happy is to ask them. If we cannot trust them to know the meanings of ordinary words, how can we expect them to understand our definitions?
Chris Peterson
After reading "Truth Heals,"
After reading "Truth Heals," by Deborah King I now know the importance of being happy. Not only is it catching, it is also helpful in helping a person sustain good health.
Scientific Opinion Polling vs Wishful Results from Academia Slop
In any scientific study intended to project the results upon a defined universe of a population, the questions of any questionnaire must contain precise operational definition of words.
Otherwise, the study becomes invalid, useless to project the results upon a defined universe.
Such an invalid study, which results from failed methodology, amounts to little more than a "Push Poll" typically used by shyster pollsters during political campaigns.
Both Christopher Peterson, Ph.D., and Hans Ripple reveal to the world that they lack knowledge and skills to use a scientific method based opinion poll.
In short, Christopher and Hans get an 'F'.
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