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Part Two of a blueprint for raising awareness in your city, campus, community or company about the importance of happiness! Make It Happy partners with The Happiness Initiative to raise awareness of the importance of happiness in our personal lives and for our policy makers.
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Make Seattle Happy Report: A Blueprint for Raising
Awareness in Your Community about the importance of happiness as a guide for the future of our nation, neighborhoods
and personal life
PART TWO: MEASURING HAPPINESS
Part Two: Measuring Happiness
Subjective Well-being Indices for A New Economic Paradigm and
Guide for our Future
Can Happiness be Measured?
The short answer: Yes. The long answer: Still yes, and can be found in the OECD’s Guidelines on Measuring Subjective Well-being which documents the validity and the status of happiness measurements World Happiness Report which describes the status of happiness and well-being measures and their role in public policy.
Both documents can be found online as free downloads
Measuring Happiness in Your Community The Happiness Initiative/Happy Counts provides a scientifically internally and externally validated subjective measure of well-being any one can use at any scale to measure happiness. Note: This use is grassroots, and not a random sample. Thus, your survey results are great for conversation, but you need a scientifically valid sample as a guide for policy makers.
download the “how to” happycounts.org/toolkits
What are Happiness Indicators?Educating yourself and your community about happiness measures is an important part of raising awareness. The rest of this section introduces the major happiness measures or indexes being used nationally and internationally.
Please note: While the field of happiness and well-being measures is relatively new, there has been reasonable convergence of domains and conditions of well-being and indicators into an accepted list, indicating experts mostly agree on how to measure happiness and the conditions of happiness world-wide.
Happiness Indicators
Bhutan’s Gross National Happiness
Where: BhutanScale: City and RegionsFrequency: About Every 2 years Entity: GovernmentAccess: grossnationalhappiness.com
Where: USA Scale: scalable from state to community
Frequency: Determined Entity: NGO by userAccess: happycounts.org
The Happiness Initiative/Happy Counts Gross National Happiness Index
Gallup Healthways Poll/Well-being IndexWhere: USAScale: National to City or Region Frequency: Daily surveys, annual public reportsEntity: BusinessAccess: well-beingindex.com
Gallup World PollWhere: International Scale: NationsFrequency: Periodic survey, annual public reportsEntity: BusinessAccess: gallup.com/strategicconsulting/en-us/worldpoll.aspx
*additional areas
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U Penn Center for Positive Psychology – Authentic Happiness
Where: University of PennsylvaniaScale: IndividualFrequency: Studies released in journals, etc. Entity: AcademicAccess: authentichappiness.sas.upenn.edu/Default.aspx
OECD Better Life IndexWhere: International Scale: NationFrequency: Annual Entity: NGOAccess: oecdbetterlifeindex.org
New Economics Foundation Happy Planet Index
Where: InternationalScale: NationalFrequency: AnnualEntity: NGOAccess: happyplanetindex.org
European Social Survey
Where: EuropeScale: National, some regionsFrequency: AnnualEntity: AcademicAccess: ess.nsd.uib.no/
Where: Great Britain Scale: NationFrequency: Annual Entity: GovernmentAccess: ons.gov.uk/ons/interactive/well-being-wheel-of-measures/index.html
Great Britain’s Measures of National Well-being
Canadian Index of Well-being
Where: CanadaScale: National, limited to provincial levelsFrequency: AnnuallyEntity: NGOAccess: uwaterloo.ca/canadian-index-wellbeing/
World Values SurveyWhere: The Globe Scale: NationsFrequency: Annually or longer intervalsEntity: NGOAccess: worldvaluessurvey.org
What next?
Part One: Raising Awareness Part Two: Measuring HappinessPart Three: Policy Recommendations
Visit happycounts.org to gather tools and resources for grassroots activism in your community
towards a new economic paradigmyour happiness counts. count your happiness
Make Seattle Happy: A Blueprint for Raising Awareness in Your Community.
Please use these materials to raise awareness about the importance of happiness and well-being, the happiness movement and the aim of a new economic paradigm. These materials may be used or reproduced for any non-commercial use. For more information, inquiries or comments, please email [email protected] or visit happycounts.org Report compiled by: Laura Musikanski, JD, MBAEditing team: Eldan Goldenberg, James BradburyCopyright © The Happiness Initiative 2013
