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Metrics of Subjective Well-Being: Limits and Improvements pp 65–84Cite as

Measures of Happiness: Which to Choose?

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Part of the book series: Happiness Studies Book Series ((HAPS))

Abstract

Happiness is defined as the subjective enjoyment of one’s life as a whole, also called ‘life-satisfaction.’ Two components of happiness are distinguished; an affective component (how well one feels most of the time) and a cognitive component (the degree to which one perceived to get what one wants from life). In this chapter, I present an overview of valid measures of these concepts, drawing on the ‘Collection of Happiness Measures’ of the ‘World Database of Happiness’. To date (2016), this collection includes more than two-thousand measures of happiness, mostly single direct questions. Links in this text lead to detail about these measures and the studies in which these have been used. In this chapter, I describe the differences and discuss their strengths and weaknesses.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    ‘Eudaimonic’ happiness is another word for ‘positive mental health’ and covers various traits deemed beneficial, such as autonomy, identity and meaningfulness. Most of the meanings addressed by this term fit the right top quadrant of Scheme 1 It is a fuzzy concept and several of its constituent cannot be adequately measured using self-reports.

  2. 2.

    The last item in the SWLS is a question whether one would live the same life if one could live one’s life over again. The assumption is that happy people will want to repeat their life. Yet one can enjoy present life but still be open for something else.

  3. 3.

    As assessed on August 30, 2016.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. EHERO, Erasmus University of Rotterdam, Rotterdam, The Netherlands

    Ruut Veenhoven

  2. North-West University, Potchefstroom, South Africa

    Ruut Veenhoven

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  1. Ruut Veenhoven
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Correspondence to Ruut Veenhoven .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Happiness Studies, Erasmus University Rotterdam Happiness Studies, Rotterdam, The Netherlands

    Gaël Brulé

  2. Dipartimento di Scienze Statistiche, Università di Roma "La Sapienza" , Roma, Italy

    Filomena Maggino

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Veenhoven, R. (2017). Measures of Happiness: Which to Choose?. In: Brulé, G., Maggino, F. (eds) Metrics of Subjective Well-Being: Limits and Improvements. Happiness Studies Book Series. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-61810-4_4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-61810-4_4

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

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  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-61810-4

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