My masters dissertation on happiness economics

tomallen

Howdy everyone,

Long time lurker, mainly in the classifieds section, but I'm in need of a hand.

If you're interested in helping out with my social research project for my economics masters dissertation and have 5 (well actually 7) minutes free, then you're my new favourite person!

It's as simple as this: One developing line of research in economics relates to what factors in day-to-day life determine our happiness (suitably called 'happiness economics'). This research is undertaken by academics and public bodies such as the Office for National Statistics. In my masters dissertation I am hoping to further this research by gathering data through a very simple questionnaire and then analysing it.

Where you come in is with the questionnaire. It takes 7 (yes seven) minutes to fill in from start to finish and would be such a help for me in my project if you could help by filling it out.

Here it is: https://www.esurveycreator.com/s/040afae

If you could do that for me I would be very grateful, and if you have any questions please go ahead.

Tom

solosuperia

Well I tried..........
But it wouldn't let me past the 2nd page, it objected to my weight.
Initially entered 14 stones and didn't update the lbs.
Having completed the rest of page tried to move on and it said the weight was in error.
I assumed that by some quirk of programming you had to enter the lbs field for it to register use!
After trying a few things eg entering 1lb etc gave up..............
As my height is 5' 10" and weight 14 stone,
Does it object to fat old gits?

MountainMonster

I've got the same problem as SoloSuperia too. The system will not accept my weight, although i'm not that heavy.

thistle_

Same problem here with entering the weight.

It obviously thinks weight too much. The last thread of happiness in my life had just been torn, and the local economy is now sure to implode.

4kicks

fail. same problem (wish Id read the first three posts before trying, mind)

tomallen

Thanks so much for trying anyway! I'll get straight over and try and fix the problem.

Tom

Edit: Fixed the problem. I'd limited number inputs to between 0 to 12 for the lbs entry which had also limited the stones! So anyone above 13 stones or higher (fat gits like you say) weren't able to complete! I'm 15 stone.. you'd have thought I would have tried it at some point as well..

team47b

This survey was interrupted. Please try again later.

Thank you for your understanding.

tomallen

team47b wrote:

This survey was interrupted. Please try again later.

Thank you for your understanding.

Not any more!

desweller

Done and done.

ben@31

Done,

I have some points for you...

I find it hard to place a value on my levels of anxious and happiness, how can you measure it? Also they change throughout the day depending what I'm doing and thinking at that particular point.

As for think what I've done is worthwhile, depends if I'm at home or at work? I often find what I do at home (fitness training for example) more worthwhile than what I do at work (slave to the system).

For relationship status. You missed off the option to select "repels women like a high pressure water canon".

confused@BR

Well, that was straightforward. Pleased to help, hope all goes well.

tomallen

confused@BR wrote:

Well, that was straightforward. Pleased to help, hope all goes well.

Cheers. Got over 80 responses so far, mainly from the BR forum! Thanks everyone.

tomallen

Things are going really well!

Up to just under 300 responses now for the questionnaire, which I'm happy about. Would like to reach 400 still, so if anyone hasn't filled it out yet, it would still be very much appreciated!

bompington

tomallen wrote:

I'd limited number inputs to between 0 to 12 for the lbs entry which had also limited the stones!

Err, I'm currently 12 stone 13lbs...

secretsam

Done

Happiness economics, eh? Interesting

Presume this is attempting to bridge the gap between economics "the science" and Psychology/Sociology?

SecretSam (BSocSc(Hons) err...Economics...)

tomallen

bompington wrote:

tomallen wrote:

I'd limited number inputs to between 0 to 12 for the lbs entry which had also limited the stones!

Err, I'm currently 12 stone 13lbs...

Well that would be silly wouldn't it.. I really should know there are 14lbs in a stone. Luckily I expanded the limits to numbers under 40, so you shouldn't have had any problem with inputting 13 lbs.

tomallen

SecretSam wrote:

Done

Happiness economics, eh? Interesting

Presume this is attempting to bridge the gap between economics "the science" and Psychology/Sociology?

SecretSam (BSocSc(Hons) err...Economics...)

Exactly, yeah. It's applying a more quantitative approach to a historically psychological subject. One fairly common difference is economists tend to believe it's important to model happiness by assessing current situational characteristics (wealth, education, family etc). Psychologists often lean towards the opinion that one's happiness is more determined by personality and genetics, and that situational characteristics only cause a brief shift in happiness, before a person adjusts back to a given set point (based on personality and genetics etc). It's called set-point theory. All pretty interesting stuff.

mpatts

Another economics graduate here too, completed.

I work 'in business' now, and one of the areas which I find wholly dissatisfying is the reliance on traditional 'cost benefit' for everything. Happiness economics could go some way to bridging this by attributing a 'value' to happiness.

secretsam

mpatts wrote:

Another economics graduate here too, completed.

I work 'in business' now, and one of the areas which I find wholly dissatisfying is the reliance on traditional 'cost benefit' for everything. Happiness economics could go some way to bridging this by attributing a 'value' to happiness.

Similar approach to the way they tried to apply a value to health improvement using QALYs (Quality-Adjusted Life Years) in health a while back? It was used to try and assess competing treatments when one resource (money) was the scarce factor