Methods for Measurement of Happiness

Happiness in this context is defined as `the degree to which an individual judges the overall quality of his life-as-a-whole positively', or in short: how well one likes the life one lives. In this way, happiness belongs to a wider class of subjective appraisals of life, which is usually referred to as ‘subjective well-being’ (SWB) or ‘life satisfaction’. (cf. Chapter 2). We will confine this description to the measurement of happiness, but the following text mutatis mutandis equally applies to other forms of subjective wellbeing that are measured in a similar way. Given the above definition of happiness, the obvious way to measure it is to ask the individual to give his or her opinion on one’s own happiness situation.