Happiness
Happiness
Happiness
Goal: Calculate happiness, using the WHR Method, across Canadian universities. Which university is the happiest?
Background: A heavy consideration for high school students today when choosing a university to attend is student life. That often combines activities varying from intramurals to clubs to community events. But it also includes a measure of belongingness, comradery, and potential happiness.
When I was choosing my post-secondary path, particularly looking into student life, I resorted to stereotypes and assumptions. I had no real measure of whether or not I would be happy studying at UofT or Waterloo, but it was common rhetoric that these universities were all work and very little enjoyment. Now, that could all be true, but is it fair to make a life-altering decision based on stereotypes and fallacies?
People also talk about “prestige” and look at public rankings. These rankings are typically either based on academic prowess or research or sometimes post-grad employment rates and average salary after graduation. But when I graduate, will I be thinking about the classes I attended? The research projects the University is working on? Or where do my classmates go to work full-time? Likely, I’ll be reminiscing about the late nights baking with friends, the walks and talks, the potlucks, the midnight breakthroughs, and the once-in-a-lifetime opportunities. So, what if there was a way to give more importance to happiness and well-being in determining how to achieve and measure personal and social development?
Introduction: The World Happiness Report reflects a worldwide demand for more attention to happiness and well-being as criteria for government policy. The original efforts behind the World Happiness Report were to deprioritize the use of GDP as the key measure of a country’s progress or quality of people’s lives. It reviews the state of happiness in the world today and shows how the science of happiness explains personal and national variations in happiness.
The Gallup World Poll and World Happiness Report methodology will be adapted for the context of university students, thus removing key factors like GDP per capita, healthy life expectancy at birth, and perceptions of corruption.
So, why do all this? Maybe the data will help people make more informed decisions about their futures. Maybe it’ll demystify some stereotypes we have about some schools. Maybe it’ll provide more context into the well-being of the future generation. No matter what, I think it’ll be fun.
Note: This is not affiliated with Queen's University or the Smith School of Business. This is purely a passion project :)
Data Sources:
Happiness score or subjective well-being (variable name ladder): It is the average response to the question of life evaluations. The wording of the question is
“Please imagine a ladder, with steps numbered from 0 at the bottom to 10 at the top. The top of the ladder represents the best possible life for you, and the bottom of the ladder represents the worst possible life for you. On which step of the ladder would you say you personally feel you stand at this time?”
Social support (or having someone to count on in times of trouble) is the average of the binary responses (either 0 or 1) to the question
“If you were in trouble, do you have relatives or friends you can count on to help you whenever you need them, or not?”
Freedom to make life choices is the average of responses to the question
“Are you satisfied or dissatisfied with your freedom to choose what you do with your life?”
Generosity is the residual of regressing average of response to the question
“Have you contributed to a charity/non-profit in the past month?”
Positive affect is defined as the average of three positive affect measures: Laugh, enjoyment, and doing interesting things. These measures are the responses to the following three questions, respectively:
“Did you experience enjoyment during a lot of the day yesterday?” “Did you learn or do something interesting yesterday?” “Did you smile or laugh a lot yesterday?”
Negative affect is defined as the average of three negative affect measures. They are worry, sadness, and anger, respectively the responses to
“Did you experience worry during a lot of the day yesterday?” “How about Sadness?” “How about Anger?”
Sources:
World Happiness Report (About)
https://worldhappiness.report/about/
World Happiness Report (Analysis)
“World Happiness Report: Origins, Purpose, Contents, Impact and Future”
https://www.elgaronline.com/display/book/9781800889675/chapter39.xml
“How does the Gallup World Poll Work?”
https://www.gallup.com/178667/gallup-world-poll-work.aspx
“Happiness: towards a holistic approach to development”
https://www.un.org/esa/socdev/ageing/documents/NOTEONHAPPINESSFINALCLEAN.pdf
Goal: Calculate happiness, using the WHR Method, across Canadian universities. Which university is the happiest?
Background: A heavy consideration for high school students today when choosing a university to attend is student life. That often combines activities varying from intramurals to clubs to community events. But it also includes a measure of belongingness, comradery, and potential happiness.
When I was choosing my post-secondary path, particularly looking into student life, I resorted to stereotypes and assumptions. I had no real measure of whether or not I would be happy studying at UofT or Waterloo, but it was common rhetoric that these universities were all work and very little enjoyment. Now, that could all be true, but is it fair to make a life-altering decision based on stereotypes and fallacies?
People also talk about “prestige” and look at public rankings. These rankings are typically either based on academic prowess or research or sometimes post-grad employment rates and average salary after graduation. But when I graduate, will I be thinking about the classes I attended? The research projects the University is working on? Or where do my classmates go to work full-time? Likely, I’ll be reminiscing about the late nights baking with friends, the walks and talks, the potlucks, the midnight breakthroughs, and the once-in-a-lifetime opportunities. So, what if there was a way to give more importance to happiness and well-being in determining how to achieve and measure personal and social development?
Introduction: The World Happiness Report reflects a worldwide demand for more attention to happiness and well-being as criteria for government policy. The original efforts behind the World Happiness Report were to deprioritize the use of GDP as the key measure of a country’s progress or quality of people’s lives. It reviews the state of happiness in the world today and shows how the science of happiness explains personal and national variations in happiness.
The Gallup World Poll and World Happiness Report methodology will be adapted for the context of university students, thus removing key factors like GDP per capita, healthy life expectancy at birth, and perceptions of corruption.
So, why do all this? Maybe the data will help people make more informed decisions about their futures. Maybe it’ll demystify some stereotypes we have about some schools. Maybe it’ll provide more context into the well-being of the future generation. No matter what, I think it’ll be fun.
Note: This is not affiliated with Queen's University or the Smith School of Business. This is purely a passion project :)
Data Sources:
Happiness score or subjective well-being (variable name ladder): It is the average response to the question of life evaluations. The wording of the question is
“Please imagine a ladder, with steps numbered from 0 at the bottom to 10 at the top. The top of the ladder represents the best possible life for you, and the bottom of the ladder represents the worst possible life for you. On which step of the ladder would you say you personally feel you stand at this time?”
Social support (or having someone to count on in times of trouble) is the average of the binary responses (either 0 or 1) to the question
“If you were in trouble, do you have relatives or friends you can count on to help you whenever you need them, or not?”
Freedom to make life choices is the average of responses to the question
“Are you satisfied or dissatisfied with your freedom to choose what you do with your life?”
Generosity is the residual of regressing average of response to the question
“Have you contributed to a charity/non-profit in the past month?”
Positive affect is defined as the average of three positive affect measures: Laugh, enjoyment, and doing interesting things. These measures are the responses to the following three questions, respectively:
“Did you experience enjoyment during a lot of the day yesterday?” “Did you learn or do something interesting yesterday?” “Did you smile or laugh a lot yesterday?”
Negative affect is defined as the average of three negative affect measures. They are worry, sadness, and anger, respectively the responses to
“Did you experience worry during a lot of the day yesterday?” “How about Sadness?” “How about Anger?”
Sources:
World Happiness Report (About)
https://worldhappiness.report/about/
World Happiness Report (Analysis)
“World Happiness Report: Origins, Purpose, Contents, Impact and Future”
https://www.elgaronline.com/display/book/9781800889675/chapter39.xml
“How does the Gallup World Poll Work?”
https://www.gallup.com/178667/gallup-world-poll-work.aspx
“Happiness: towards a holistic approach to development”
https://www.un.org/esa/socdev/ageing/documents/NOTEONHAPPINESSFINALCLEAN.pdf