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The Assessment of Personal Happiness and Life Satisfaction

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The Metrics of Happiness

Part of the book series: Social Indicators Research Series ((SINS,volume 86))

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Abstract

There are hundreds of indexes of personal happiness and life satisfaction. Almost all of them are based on self-reported subjective assessments from polls and questionnaires. This chapter focuses on eighteen of the best-known and most-widely quoted of these measures. There is a surprising lack of unanimity in the number of questions asked (from 2 to 148), in the style and nature of the questions asked, and in the way in which the various measures deal with the representativeness, validity, and reliability of their results. The reader is also introduced to the international efforts at making research data available through the World Database of Happiness and other archival collections. This worldwide trove of data has led to considerable consensus on the correlations that exist between happiness and its many contributing factors.

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    R. Allan Freeze

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Freeze, R.A. (2022). The Assessment of Personal Happiness and Life Satisfaction. In: The Metrics of Happiness. Social Indicators Research Series, vol 86. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-10913-3_6

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