Methodology
Researching Happiness
WHAT IS HAPPINESS?
According the Psychologist:
According to Economists: Happiness is a multifaceted state of well being containing feelings of contentment, gratification, ecstasy, hope, love, satisfaction, etc. It is a tedious and controversial task of adding up all the emotional variables that go into one’s general state of happiness and then surmising a common standard of measurement. This common standard is the happiness index, or “satisfaction with life” index.
AN OVERVIEW OF EXPERIMENTAL BEHAVIORAL ECONOMICS
Studies linking psychology and economics are continually growing in number and attention. One of the pioneers in the study of subjective economics was Richard Easterlin in 1974. His paper, Does Economic Growth Improve the Human Lot? led to the "Easterlin Paradox", which in simple terms, states that national income and national happiness are not proportional. Since the seventies, multiple economists have conducted studies on happiness, welfare, and income both on the micro and macro levels of economics.
Robert Frank, in Luxury Fever (2000), makes claim as to why the average level of satisfaction in the United States has not risen with respect to gross domestic product. He links this phenomenon with the increased materialism within individual households. People excessively use tangible consumer products to compete with others in status. The total wealth an individual has little impact life satisfaction compared to their wealth with respect to their neighbors and co-workers. Richard Layard makes the same arguments in Happiness: Lessons from a New Science (2005). He concludes that when the income of one person increases, the happiness of others in the close approximation decreases.
Although the use of experimental behavioral economics has increased, particularly over the last decade, the fallibility of the research methods and evidence used in these studies remain controversial. Since his 1074 publication, Richard Easterlin has been brought into question, most notably by Andrew Oswald of the University of Warwick. Participants of the study were rating their own level of happiness based on a numerical scale, minimizing the credibility of the evidence. Current research methods do not rely on the subject’s personal criticisms alone. There are many different factors that can affect happiness including biological, psychological, economical, and educational factors. The push away from the rational view point of traditional economic models is full of criticisms and uncertainties since an exact form of methodology for studying behavioral economics has yet to be established.
METHODS OF RESEARCHING
Day Reconstruction Method (DRM) The Day reconstruction Method, or DRM, was developed by Daniel Kahnemenn to trace and describe the daily emotional path of people. Participants reconstruct the privious day using a diary and a set of four packets[1]. The diary is for their personal use so that they may take notes throughout the day. It is imperative to the study that while writting the diary, respondantds are unaware of the qustions that will be presented to them in the packets. This way, preconcieved biases will be averted and the diary responses complete in detail.
Conducting the surveys within 24 hours of the day under investigation provided Kahnemenn with a flow of events rather than samples of moments. The first set of questions asked of the participants were routine. They included topics such as gender, religion, family, education, and thier well being. They were then asked to reconstruct the previous day, with the aid of the diary, as a sequence of episodes. On average, paticipants experienced 14.1 episodes in a day and were segregated by a change in location or personal interaction. By sectioning the day into intervals, Kahnemenn and his team could assess change in diurnal emotional states and how this effects work and family lives in the short run and long run.
Advantages
drm_documentation_july_2004.pdf, 189.0 kb, 07-06-2004
- Joint assessment of activities and subjective experiences.
- Information about the duration of each experiment allowing for duration weighted analysis of experience.
- Lower Respondent burden than typical for experience sampling methods.
- More complete coverage of the day than typical for experience sampling methods.
- Lower Susceptibility to retrospective reporting biases than typical for global reports on daily experiences.
- High Flexibility in adapting the content of the instrument to the needs of the specific study.
- does not disrupt normal activities.
