What makes you happy? Implication for individuals and policy makers

There is a general acceptance that “wellbeing” is a more comprehensive indicator of progress than traditionally used economic indicators. The challenge however is to estimate wellbeing in a precise manner. One approach is to ask people how happy they are (“Taken all together, how would you say things are these days? Would you say that you are very happy, pretty happy, or not too happy?”). The assumption that “happiness is well being” set me on a path to investigate “happiness”. This research was carried out in collaboration with 3Di, a leading digital advertising sales network that operates one of the largest permission database in New Zealand. Over 1200 people from the 3Di's permission database were approached and asked to describe happiness in one word. They were then asked to state the three most important things that contributed to happiness.

Prior to discussing the results, I would like to add a note on the methodology that was used to collect the data. It is true that describing something like happiness in one word is difficult. However, the regular use of search engines to find information on the World Wide Web has trained us to do just that, that is, to come up with a word or set of words to convey what we want. After few tries we are successful in entering the precise word or set of words that gets us what we want. A similar approach was used in this study and almost everyone answered the question without any difficulty. Considering the range and nature of words collected it appears that they were based on the respondents’ personal context.

The top five descriptors of “Happiness” were contentment, family, satisfaction, love and peace (see in the Word Cloud 1). The word “wellbeing” was mentioned but very few times in comparison to the top five ones.

Word Cloud 1: Describe happiness in one word

Four of the words (contentment, satisfaction, love and peace) are abstract in nature; in contrast, family is a concrete entity. In considering the top five words together, it could be argued that “family” was the context for the four abstract entities. Thus it appears for many in New Zealand, happiness is centred on their family. This was confirmed in the responses given for the three most important things that contributed to happiness (see in Word Cloud 2).

Respondents were asked to indicate three most important things that contributed to happiness. The responses were ranked by its frequency to produce three lists corresponding to the three most important things. In the first list family and health ranked first and second. The remaining responses were emotions that are generally associated with happiness (see in Word Cloud 2). In considering family and health alongside the emotional variables, the implicit suggestion that could be drawn is that relationship and individuals are the building blocks of happiness. The presence of the qualifying adjective “good” suggests the recognition of quality in the relationships (e.g. “good family”, “a good wife”, “good relationship”).

Word Cloud 2: The most important thing that contribute to happiness

In the second list “family” still dominated, placed at the top of the rank (see Word Cloud 3). The qualifying adjective “good” continues to show up suggesting quality matters. “Friends” were mentioned more times which strengthens the suggestion that relationship is an important factor. It is worth mentioning in this second list, material objects like money, job, and financial status also gained prominence.

Word Cloud 3: The second most important thing that contributes to happiness

Money topped the third list. Family, friends and health were the other most frequently mentioned responses. Considering that family held the top position in the previous two lists and is the second most frequent response in the current list, money need to be seen in the context of family. This observation was evident in the words used to qualify money in many responses (e.g. having enough money, enough money to pay the bills, money for home and recreation).

Word Cloud 4: The third most important thing that contributes to happiness  

The observations made in this study have implications at both the individual and community level. At the individual level, relationship and health of individuals are fundamental to their happiness. Relationship building is a skill that is learnt through childhood, teenage years and young adulthood. Hence the formative years need to focus on acquiring the relationship building skills. It is now recognised that long term consequences of health are triggered right from conception, therefore the environment and habits from birth to adulthood are key factors of one’s health.

At the policy level the focus needs to be on developing and maintaining infrastructure to support families and their health. The inference about economy drawn from the position given to money is that economic activities ought to be directed at supporting a lifestyle that offers quality family life and good health.

Thank you for reading this posting so far, at this point I would like to solicit your help and contribution...please read on.

The results presented here are from my research carried out to discover happiness. My aim is to delineate the factors of happiness, for which I am requesting your help.  If the results presented resonate with you, I would like to hear how you would interpret them, either based on your own experience or with the knowledge of science behind the facts of life you may have. Please click on the comment link below to write your views, explanation and/or suggestions in the space below. Any help you can give me will be greatly appreciated. You can comment anonymously but if you are comfortable to identify yourself I would like to enter in to a discourse with you on happiness and perhaps share with you what I have discovered about happiness in my journey so far.