My masters dissertation on happiness economics

Tom444

Howdy everyone,

Long time lurker across the MSE forums, and I've only recently registered, but I'm in need of a hand.

If you're interested in helping out with my social research project for my economics masters dissertation and have 5 (well actually 7) minutes free, then you're my new favourite person!

It's as simple as this: One developing line of research in economics relates to what factors in day-to-day life determine our happiness (suitably called 'happiness economics'). This research is undertaken by academics and public bodies such as the Office for National Statistics. In my masters dissertation I am hoping to further this research by gathering data through a very simple questionnaire and then analysing it.

Where you come in is with the questionnaire. It takes 7 (yes seven) minutes to fill in from start to finish and would be such a help for me in my project if you could help by filling it out.

Here it is: https: //www .esurveycreator. com/s/040afae

(simply remove the spaces and paste into browser)

If you could do that for me I would be very grateful, and if you have any questions please go ahead.

Tom

oneye14

One would imagine happiness economics is being so rich and not paying any tax to affect your increasing wealth ....
Eg. Richard Branson, Cameron, prince of Wales etc...

Oblivion

One thing that looks odd in your survey Tom is the question about academic achievement. It seems to be ranked according to 'status' with Doctorate at the top, and yet professional / work achievement is ranked below GCSE (sorry if I've forgotten the exact titles).

I would place professional exams, e.g. accountant, law exams etc., way above any school qualifications.

Tom444

Oblivion wrote: »

One thing that looks odd in your survey Tom is the question about academic achievement. It seems to be ranked according to 'status' with Doctorate at the top, and yet professional / work achievement is ranked below GCSE (sorry if I've forgotten the exact titles).

I would place professional exams, e.g. accountant, law exams etc., way above any school qualifications.

This question was lifted from an Office for National Statistics questionnaire (that's not to say it's perfect or completely suitable for my questionnaire) and I did have some difficulty arriving at this as a question and its answer options. I wanted to avoid any sort of obvious hierarchy, but couldn't avoid it for academic qualifications. I didn't consider where the professional qualification option fell in the list but that's a really good point.

This leaves a grey area for those people who've got both academic qualifications and professional qualifications like you say. Definitely needs looking into.

Thanks for your input!

Oblivion

A further observation if I may Tom.

The survey asks for your annual income but it seems to me that in the context of happiness economics there are two glaring omissions ...

How much savings has an individual managed to put aside and

Have they got a secure pension plan in place.

Both these issues are fundamental to current and future wellbeing and happiness.

building_with_lego

"This survey was interrupted. Please try again later.

Thank you for your understanding."

I got 25% of the way through...

Tom444

Oblivion wrote: »

A further observation if I may Tom.

The survey asks for your annual income but it seems to me that in the context of happiness economics there are two glaring omissions ...

How much savings has an individual managed to put aside and

Have they got a secure pension plan in place.

Both these issues are fundamental to current and future wellbeing and happiness.

I've added a question relating to future preparation with savings/pensions. Really good point, which I considered during the writing of my questionnaire but managed to forget to do anything about!

Tom444

building_with_lego wrote: »

"This survey was interrupted. Please try again later.

Thank you for your understanding."

I got 25% of the way through...

Ahh bad timing! I took it down for 2 mins to add a question!

Back up now.

Errata

Good luck with it. As people are finding holes in it and you're changing it, will you discard all responses up to the cutoff point when you decide it can go 'live'?

Tom444

That is something I'll have to look at when I get to the analysis stage. Hopefully with the large number of responses that I'm targeting, I'll be able to use responses only from the finalised questionnaire. It's annoying that I might have to discard some responses but this has been a really efficient way to get feedback because you guys are so quick to reply and I can make changes before it's too late.

Errata

Pilotting a study is the opportunity to adjust/change the questionairre and your results then include a small section on how you pilotted it and why and what changes you made.
If you don't discard responses made before the final version of the questionairre you won't get kosher results.