What makes you happy?

There is a general acceptance that “wellbeing” is a more comprehensive indicator of progress than traditionally used economic indicators. The challenge however is to estimate wellbeing in a precise manner. One approach is to ask people how happy they are: (“Taken all together, how would you say things are these days? Would you say that you are very happy, pretty happy, or not too happy?”). The assumption that “happiness is wellbeing” set me on a path to investigate “happiness”. This research was carried out in collaboration with 3Di, a leading digital advertising sales network that operates one of the largest permission databases in New Zealand. Over 1200 people from the 3Di's permission database were approached and asked to describe happiness in one word. They were then asked to state the three most important things contributing to happiness.

Prior to discussing the results, I would like to add a note on the methodology that was used to collect the data. It is true that describing something like happiness in one word is difficult. However, the regular use of search engines to find information on the World Wide Web has trained us to do just that, that is, to come up with a word or set of words to convey what we want. After a few tries, we are successful in entering the precise word or set of words that gets us what we want. A similar approach was used in this study and almost everyone answered the question without any difficulty. Considering the range and nature of words collected, it appears that they were based on the respondents’ personal context.

The top five descriptors of “Happiness” were ‘contentment’, ‘family’, ‘satisfaction’, ‘love’, and ‘peace’ (see in the Word Cloud 1). The word ‘wellbeing’ was mentioned but very few times in comparison to the top five words.

Four of the words (‘contentment’, ‘satisfaction’, ‘love’, and ‘peace’) are abstract in nature; in contrast, ‘family’ is a concrete entity. In considering the top five words together, it could be argued that ‘family’ was the context for the four abstract entities. Thus, for many New Zealanders, happiness is centred on family. This was confirmed in the responses given for the three most important things that contributed to happiness (see Word Cloud 2):

Respondents were asked to indicate the three most important things contributing to happiness. The responses were ranked by frequency to produce three lists, corresponding to the three most important things. In the first list ‘family’ and ‘health’ ranked first and second, respectively. The remaining responses were emotions generally associated with happiness (see Word Cloud 2). In considering ‘family’ and ‘health’ alongside the emotional variables, the implicit suggestion drawn is that relationships and individuals are the building blocks of happiness. The presence of the qualifying adjective ‘good’ suggests this quality is required within the relationships (e.g. ‘a good family’, ‘a good husband or wife’, ‘a good relationship’).

In the second list ‘family’ still dominated, placed at the top of the rank (see Word Cloud 3) and the qualifying adjective ‘good’ continues to show quality matters. ‘Friends’ were mentioned more times, strengthening the importance of relationships. It is worth mentioning in this second list, material objects like money, job, and financial status also gained prominence.

‘Money’ topped the third list while ‘family’, ‘friends’, and ‘health’ were the other most frequently mentioned responses. Considering ‘family’ held the top position in the previous two lists and is the second most frequent response in the current list, money should be viewed within the context of family; a suggestion endorsed by the respondents’ use of money qualifiers (e.g. having enough money to pay the bills, money for home and recreation).

The observations made in this study have implications at both the individual and community level. At the individual level, relationships and the health of individuals are fundamental to happiness. Relationship building is a skill learnt from childhood and teenage years, right through to young adulthood, and these formative years should continue to focus on acquiring relationship building skills. It is now recognised the long-term consequences of health are triggered right from conception, therefore the environment and habits formulated from birth to adulthood are key factors contributing to one’s health.

At the policy level the focus needs to be on developing and maintaining infrastructure to support families and their health. The inference about economy drawn from the position given to money is that economic activities ought to be directed at supporting a lifestyle that offers quality family life and good health.