http://www.happiness-survey.com/
"The Oxford Happiness Questionnaire is being used here with kind permission of Elsevier Ltd., license #1885930815114. It was extracted from Personality and Individual Differences, Vol.33, #7, pp. 1080-1081 and developed by: Peter Hills and Micahel Argyle from The Oxford Happiness Project, School of Psychology, Oxford Brookes University, Headington Campus, Gipsy Lane, Oxford OX3 0BP, UK."
Surveys are described by google as a general view or examination of someone, a group or something, this 'general' view allows the examiners of the survey to form correlations between results and external factors in order to form a conclusion. Correlations can be extremely weak or provide an in depth insight into our society, however, these correlations are formed by interpretations of data which makes them flimsy due to each person's personal bias.
The Oxford Happiness Questionnaire which has about 29 questions which will provide you your "happiness" level, "1" being the unhappiest and "6" being the happiest. All this statements ask you to rank certain things from a scale of 1-6, "1" being strongly disagree and "6" being strongly agree. The intent of the survey is unclear but it assures you that they will not disclose any of your personal details.
It poses an extensive amount of issues as the idea of measuring happiness seems empty to due it being an emotion which differs completely from person to person as it is an internal thought process. Humans attempt to communicate this emotion through language, however, language is not always accurate and doesn't express the full extent of emotion so to generalize happiness numerically removes this key communicator of dialectical language.
The idea of measuring happiness is problematic enough but then you add in statements which participants must rank based on their life and it creates further interpretation problems or even emotions lost in translation. People taking the surveys may interpret the specific statements and numerical values differently to the person who created the survey or even the person evaluating the results. Some statements may cause emotions to get lost in translation as their significance to happiness may differ from person to person with the creators or examiners values of happiness differentiating from society's. "I have very warm feelings towards almost everyone," here is a statement from the survey which the participant has to rate whether they agree or not with it. The creator's intent fro the question may express his values of happiness which is defined by how much he likes the people around him. While others may only need to enjoy the company of a few people around them to achieve significant happiness rather than the greater who believes liking everyone achieves greater happiness. The lack of justification the person gets while answering the survey restricts to them reasoning their answer manipulating the examiners interpretations due to the purely numerical values. A emotional language barrier is further created by the creator using the word "warm" which can greatly vary from person to person as he is using a temperate metaphor to describe feelings. In my previous discussions, I immediately perceived it as like but this terminology is so broad to describe emotion that it may vary causing complications.
Clarifications in the short statements may aid comprehensions but it has the risk of further confusing the participants. The lack of justification they get in their answers restricts the interpretations and correlations that can be made about happiness due the the implementation of personal mindsets of the examiners. Even with the addition of text boxes there is no guarantee of how honest people will be on an online survey and their responses may be lost in translation, that is why many studies are preferred to be done in person.
"The Oxford Happiness Questionnaire is being used here with kind permission of Elsevier Ltd., license #1885930815114. It was extracted from Personality and Individual Differences, Vol.33, #7, pp. 1080-1081 and developed by: Peter Hills and Micahel Argyle from The Oxford Happiness Project, School of Psychology, Oxford Brookes University, Headington Campus, Gipsy Lane, Oxford OX3 0BP, UK."
Surveys are described by google as a general view or examination of someone, a group or something, this 'general' view allows the examiners of the survey to form correlations between results and external factors in order to form a conclusion. Correlations can be extremely weak or provide an in depth insight into our society, however, these correlations are formed by interpretations of data which makes them flimsy due to each person's personal bias.
The Oxford Happiness Questionnaire which has about 29 questions which will provide you your "happiness" level, "1" being the unhappiest and "6" being the happiest. All this statements ask you to rank certain things from a scale of 1-6, "1" being strongly disagree and "6" being strongly agree. The intent of the survey is unclear but it assures you that they will not disclose any of your personal details.
It poses an extensive amount of issues as the idea of measuring happiness seems empty to due it being an emotion which differs completely from person to person as it is an internal thought process. Humans attempt to communicate this emotion through language, however, language is not always accurate and doesn't express the full extent of emotion so to generalize happiness numerically removes this key communicator of dialectical language.
The idea of measuring happiness is problematic enough but then you add in statements which participants must rank based on their life and it creates further interpretation problems or even emotions lost in translation. People taking the surveys may interpret the specific statements and numerical values differently to the person who created the survey or even the person evaluating the results. Some statements may cause emotions to get lost in translation as their significance to happiness may differ from person to person with the creators or examiners values of happiness differentiating from society's. "I have very warm feelings towards almost everyone," here is a statement from the survey which the participant has to rate whether they agree or not with it. The creator's intent fro the question may express his values of happiness which is defined by how much he likes the people around him. While others may only need to enjoy the company of a few people around them to achieve significant happiness rather than the greater who believes liking everyone achieves greater happiness. The lack of justification the person gets while answering the survey restricts to them reasoning their answer manipulating the examiners interpretations due to the purely numerical values. A emotional language barrier is further created by the creator using the word "warm" which can greatly vary from person to person as he is using a temperate metaphor to describe feelings. In my previous discussions, I immediately perceived it as like but this terminology is so broad to describe emotion that it may vary causing complications.
Clarifications in the short statements may aid comprehensions but it has the risk of further confusing the participants. The lack of justification they get in their answers restricts the interpretations and correlations that can be made about happiness due the the implementation of personal mindsets of the examiners. Even with the addition of text boxes there is no guarantee of how honest people will be on an online survey and their responses may be lost in translation, that is why many studies are preferred to be done in person.
No comments:
Post a Comment