Happiness Index Guide by Happiness Alliance happycounts

Guide to the Happiness Index

The Happiness Index is a tool of the Happiness Alliance designed to contribute to the well-being of all beings.

Planet Happiness is a project of the Happiness Alliance working to implement the Happiness Index adapted for the tourism industry.

The Domains of Happiness & Well-being

The Happiness Index is a scientifically valid measure of well-being. This means it measures what matters for happiness and well-being.

In other words: as factors in a domain change, changes in satisfaction with life can be expected.

The Happiness Index is a subjective instrument. A subjective survey instrument gathers data in the form of a survey, questionnaire, poll, etc. The questions are also called indicators.

The data reflects respondents self-assessment of their well-being. How people feel about their well-being is a valid and dependable way to measure and understand happiness and well-being. Subjective data reflects the well-being of each person who takes the survey and of the group as a whole in aggregate. It can also reflect a population when there is a random sampling, enough people in a population take the survey or by groundtruthing the data.

The Happiness Index is a scientifically valid measure of well-being. This means the questions convey the intended meaning and the intended meaning is understood by respondents.

Access the methodology for the Happiness Index: Musikanski et al. (2017). Happiness Index Methodology. Journal of Social Change, 9 (1) 4-31. Available at: https://scholarworks.waldenu.edu/jsc/vol9/iss1/2/

You can use the Happiness Index for your area or group. Contact info@happycounts.org

By using the Happiness Index your area demonstrates leadership and vision.

Tips for adapting the Happiness Index

When join the Happiness Alliance, you have the option to adapt the Happiness Index for your area’s circumstances.*

* As adaptation incurs

costs.

You can add questions to the Happiness Index. The types of questions you can add are:

Text box – use this for open ended questions. Multiple choice – use this for one or more choices and there is no correlation or relationship to wellbeing. Single choice – use this for when there is only one choice and no correlation or relationship to well-being. Scale questions – use these for when a higher or lower score has or may have a relationship to well-being.

Answers for scale questions

Often used five point answer scales: Satisfaction scales Very dissatisfied Dissatisfied Neither satisfied nor dissatisfied Satisfied Very satisfied

Weak/Strong scales Very weak Somewhat weak Neither weak nor strong Somewhat strong Very strong

Agreement Scales Strongly disagree Disagree Neither agree nor disagree Agree Strongly agree

None/All Time scales None of my time Not much of my time Some of my time Most of my time All of my time

Agreement V.2 Scales Not at all A little Somewhat Very Extremely

Never/All Time Scales Never Rarely Some of the time Most of the time All of the time

Rare/Often Frequency scales Very rarely or never Rarely Sometimes Often Very often or always

Monthly/Never Frequency scales At least once a month At least once every three months At least once every six months Once in the last year Never

Quality scales Poor Fair Good Very good Excellent

Confidence scales No confidence Not very much confidence A fair amount of confidence Quite a lot of confidence A great deal of confidence

Likelihood scales Not at all likely Somewhat likely Fairly likely Very likely Extremely likely

Trust scales Trust none of them Trust a few of them Trust some of them Trust most of them Trust all of them

Scales can also be from 0-10. For example: There are also other scales: seven point etc.

Question Construction: If you construct a question, to be valid it must convey the meaning it is intended to convey and the meaning it conveys must be understood by the respondent. For example: To what extent do you agree: People in my life care about me. Has a simple and clear meaning. Whereas To what extent do you agree: People in my life care for me. Could have multiple meanings. One way to do this is to model your question after existing valid questions.

The OECD Guidelines for Measuring Subjective Well-being are also helpful.

You might even call them required reading. Access them at http://www.oecd.org/statistics/oecd-guidelines-onmeasuring-subjective-well-being-9789264191655-en.htm

Question Construction: We start with satisfaction with life, affect and psychological well-being so as not to bias the data. For example, asking a question about feeling loved, feeling lonely, trust in government, et-cetera before asking about satisfaction with life could bias the data, as being asked a question can change a person's state of mind.

We follow with questions in the domains of the Happiness Index and then questions added for an area. Questions can be added to domains or as part of a separate domain. Often added questions include: In what (area, municipality, city, neighborhood, et-cetera) do you live? With answers listing the areas. Questions asking for input about a topic specific to an area’s circumstances, problems or opportunities.

Languages

The Happiness Index is available in many languages. Choose the languages that are relevant to your site. If the Happiness Index is not available in your area’s language, contact us to discuss translating the survey and loading it into the database. Translations for questions added or changed must be included for each addition or change in the languages selected for your use.

Privacy The Happiness Alliance, a nonprofit registered in the US, follows the European Union's Protection of Personal Data Directive 2016/679, the strongest code we know of for protecting personal data. Read the full code and an executive summary online: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legalcontent/en/TXT/?uri=CELEX:32016R0679

In simple language: all of your responses will be anonymous; data is only kept for as long as it is useful; and personal information will never be sold, traded or given away.

What about collecting personal identification data for your use? You can add questions asking for personal identification information such as email, phone number or address. We add this at the end of the survey. We ask that you include an explanation of how the information will be used for the survey taker (such as to invite for follow up, send incentives or prizes, etc.), this information will be provided to you in a separate file so that you cannot connect that information to the Happiness Index data for the respondent.

You have your survey. You gathered your data.

Now…

How do you get your data? Email info@happycounts.org Tell us: - Your date range (when you gathered your data). - The URL for your survey.

Then…

What do you do with your data?

Data Analysis

Data Scales Questions in the first two domains- Cantril Ladder and Satisfaction with Life, Affect and Worthwhile

Questions in all other domains

Answers are on a scale of 0-10

Answers are on a scale of 1-5

Scale Your Data RAW SCORES

RESCALED

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100

RAW SCORES

RESCALED

1 2 3 4 5

0 25 50 75 100

Analyze Your Data To: - a few ideasUnderstand attitudes Insights on aspects of demographics – who is suffering Issue Reports Engage Community in Feedback Use Data for Decisions

Use Your Data to Create Reports - a few formats -

One Page Scorecard Happiness Report Card Policy Implications Academic Articles

SKILL UP IN DATA ANALYSIS REPORTING ENGAGEMENT DATA USE WITH THE HAPPINESS INITIATIVE LEADERSHIP TRAINING

LEARN HOW TO CHANGE THE WORLD AT HAPPYCOUNTS.ORG

Join the Happiness Alliance happycounts.org