Measuring Happiness: Subjective Happiness Scale

 Alright, back to the basics of this casual research project. As indicated in my last post: I need to better understand both WHAT happiness is for me, as well as HOW I can measure that happiness before I can continue too far with my musings on the topic. So this post is going back to those topics. Specifically it will explore the next measurement tool for happiness: The Subjective Happiness Scale.

As a little bit of review, these are the measurement tools I found for happiness and plan to explore. These came from the site: Pursuit of Happiness.

Existing Methods of Measuring Happiness

This tool is short and sweet. Short enough and sweet enough that I can include a version of the whole thing in this post. So here it is:

Instructions: For each of the following statements and/or questions, please circle the point on the scale that you feel is most appropriate in describing  you.
1. In general, I consider myself

not a very happy person 1,    2 ,   3,   4,    5,    6 ,   7 a very happy person

2. Compared to most of my peers, I consider myself

less happy 1,    2,    3,    4,    5,    6,    7 more happy

3. Some people are generally very happy. They enjoy life regardless of what is going on, getting the most out of everything. To what extent does this characterization describe you?

not at all 1,    2,    3,    4,    5,    6,    7 a great deal

4. Some people are generally not very happy. Although they are not depressed, they never seem as happy as they might be. To what extent does this characterization describe you?

not at all 1,    2,    3,    4,    5,    6,    7 a great deal

Scoring: 
To score the scale, reverse code the 4th item (i.e., turn a 7 into a 1, a 6 into a 2, a 5 into a 3, a 3 into a 5, a 2 into a 6, and a 1 into a 7), and compute the mean of the 4 items.  Norms are available in the reference below, as well as in many other publications that have used the scale (see PsycInfo).

My answers to the questions are in bold on the scale. So my final score is: 16 / 4 = 4. That seemed really low to me at first, but after reading the linked article for the scale (which I highly recommend - here it is again: Subjective Happiness Scale) I discovered that I'm only slightly below the average person when it comes to personal happiness as measured by this tool. Here is an example of the data from various US and Russian populations who also took the survey (this can be found in the link immediately above):


The overall mean is ~4.5. It's worth noting that the sampled populations were predominantly US college campuses (so we may be biased towards that particular type of human), but regardless... that statistic is a bit humbling. How unhappy are we as a group? And how in the world can we fix that? That's a question for another post (or probably several posts). 

Summary:

After reading about and trying this measurement tool, I definitely like it more than the Oxford Happiness Inventory which I reviewed prior to this tool. The reasons for this are: 
  1. Brevity
    • The tool is only 4 questions, and the scoring is not too difficult. Within a quick 60 seconds or so you can take this inventory and get a quick bead on your overall happiness.
  2. Effective for Personal Use
    1. The tool isn't trying to hone in on "happiness" through external factors (i.e., "have you felt proud in the last week?"), it's asking the individual to self report on their own perception of happiness. In short, it doesn't presume to know exactly what causes or results from happiness - it just asks whether or not you perceive yourself to be happy. In that regard I feel like this is the best tool for personal evaluations of my own happiness.
This is probably the tool I will end up using to monitor and manage my own happiness, though I will hold off on finalizing that decision until I've reviewed a few more.

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