In Reply to: Flawed? posted by Skeptic on August 08, 2006 at 04:15:38:
It seems to me that "happiness" is a culturally bound and fluid construct. When the statisticians correlate objective measures of wealth, health & education with a psycho-social and therefore subjective measure of happiness, we need to know exactly what sort of items comprise the measurement of happiness and on which populations it has been validated as reliably measuring "happiness." It's also necessary to know under what conditions the measure has been tested, so that we can control for extraneous influences. For example, I'm less likely to endorse feelings of wellbeing when I'm laid up nursing a broken ankle than when I've just finished working out at the gym.
I went looking for a standardized, cross-cultural happiness scale and found Positive Psychology Resources at the Centre for Confidence in the U.K. I located the following at the Centre's page on measurement:
"One of the most widely used measurements is ‘The Satisfaction with Life Scale’, which was designed by Dr Ed Diener and consists of only five items that require respondents to rate their life satisfaction on a scale of 1-7. Extensive research has been carried out throughout the globe and it has been found that the scale correlates well with alternative measures of happiness, such as expression of positive emotion, low incidence of depression, and impressions from family and friends. Diener therefore argues that it is a valid and reliable tool for assessing people’s overall satisfaction with life."
http://www.centreforconfidence.co.uk/pp/index.php?p=c2lkPTImdGlkPTAmaWQ9NDE=
Does satisfaction = happiness? Several Positive Psychology researchers argue that happiness is more subjective & complex than "Satisfaction with Life." It's unclear how extensively the more subjective (and therefore culturally-bound and fluid) happiness scales have been tested on diverse populations under a variety of conditions.
It may not be the statistics that are flawed; it may be the study's measures don't support the conclusions.