[rkagerer]

In case others are wondering what the one simple question is (called the Cantril Ladder):

“Please imagine a ladder with steps numbered from zero at the bottom to ten at the top. Suppose we say that the top of the ladder represents the best possible life for you and the bottom of the ladder represents the worst possible life for you. If the top step is 10 and the bottom step is 0, on which step of the ladder do you feel you personally stand at the present time?”

Personally feels a little more convoluted than just asking "How happy are you, on a scale of 0-10?"

[staticman2]

I'm not a psychology expert but from stuff I read I bet the reason they don't ask "How happy are you, on a scale of 0-10?" is they tried that and found the same person would give different answers from day to day and moment to moment based on what is going on this very minute.

I'd also bet that they found the above "convoluted" question was one that led to the same people giving more consistent answers from day to day and moment to moment.

Even if I'm wrong I hope you see this is a much thornier problem than just asking a question and assuming the answer tells us anything about the person taking the survey.

[levocardia]

I have done survey methodology research and fully agree, almost assuredly when you see questions worded in a seemingly "convoluted" way like this, the reason is that there was exhaustive research that found this wording was the best balance of reliability and validity.

There is also a lot of value in a question that works well enough, that you ask consistently over long stretches of time (or long stretches of distance). Maybe it's not perfect, but the longitudinal data would be worthless if they updated the wording every single year.

[rolandog]

Agreed!

Although I'm no survey expert, the thing I'd like to bring to everyone's attention is how easy it is to not take into account people that have a degree of numeric or math illiteracy... which I guess they are the main target demographic that is included by these questions (and I can also guess that they make a worryingly large part of the demographic, because our systems are rarely inclusive).

In my experience, having met people from multiple countries during the time I've been living abroad, what I have noticed is that — in this world filled with inequality — it is a privilege to be able to have a good grasp in scientific subjects. And, for lots of different factors, people have setbacks or trauma that make it difficult to learn a subject that is either boring or painful to them.

So, yes the questions are a bit convoluted, but they help paint a mental image for probably the majority with a thing that they may be closely familiar with: stairs... Plus, it probably helps statisticians get a better signal to noise out of the questions, too.

[nxobject]

I agree – I'm sure social psychologists and psychometricians have been thinking about this since forever, probably since even the dawn of modern psychometrics. Cross-cultural and cross-language validity would likely be particularly problematic with something more detailed, especially once you get entangled with things like how anger is expressed and conceptualized, the role of positive outer expressions of affect like smiling, etc.

[quitit]

It's easy to overlook the importance in outlining a process for evaluating each rung in the ladder.

Adding this nuance to the question serves to invite deeper thought and avoid assigning a motivation-based rating (like when you give the Uber driver 5 stars when what you felt was actually just "satisfactory").

A more basic rating question can invite other kinds of influence, such as a motivation in how they'd like their life to be perceived rather than how they genuinely feel it to be.

In surveys with less nuance the data tends to correlate around the extremes.

[M95D]

It's the "best possible life for you" part of the question that makes all the difference.

[seizethecheese]

But it needs to be convoluted. The problem with the simpler version is the word happy needs to be translated both culturally and more literally.

[notahacker]

Yep. There are some implicit cultural expectations around "best possible life" which vary from country to country, but it's not quite as much a "is the word in your local language we've rendered as happy closer in meaning to satisfied or ecstatic?" question, and it's also less about short term emotions on the day of the survey and much more about satisfaction with life opportunities, which is generally more relevant for international and longitudinal comparisons...

[Aperocky]

Happy have so many definition that I like the question better, it is much less ambiguous than "happy".

My happiness changes depending on many external factor and varies by hour and days, but the answer to the former question aren't going to change quite as often, would have probably provided the same answer over the entire year.

[arjie]

What an interesting question. It would seem intuitively that a population with a limited band of socioeconomic mobility must answer 10 and one with a wide band of mobility must answer 0. I wonder whether that is true.

[Doxin]

As far as I can tell happiness is relative in any case, I'm not sure that accounting for that in the question is a bad thing.

[M95D]

And yet, highest rating countries also have good socioeconomic mobility.

Socioeconomic mobility isn't the only thing that affects happiness. A good wife/husband contributes a lot to happiness, for example.

[tobr]

I have to say, I don’t understand what ”for you” means in ”best/worst possible life for you”. At first I read it roughly as ”given the fundamental unchanging circumstances of your life, such as where and when you were born, who your parents are, and your basic health” but maybe they mean something like ”in your subjective perspective on what is good/bad”?

[nhaehnle]

My thought as well, but the question is: does it matter for what the survey is trying to achieve?

Some people will interpret it one way, some a subtly different way, but is there a reason that people's interpretation changes over time in a way that is more rapid and more significant than the underlying question of how good their life is broadly? Probably not.

There may be cultural differences that make it tricky to do comparisons between cultures / countries, but it should give something useful when looking at the same culture / country over time.

[bossyTeacher]

>"How happy are you, on a scale of 0-10?"

Your question is likely to be interpreted as you asking the person's current MOOD hence different answers on different times are likely. While you are thinking of a less changing wider concept.

The social context is important too, there is a social stigma around admitting that you are not happy which will play into this question too.

[connorshinn]

One possible flaw in this question - I really don't like heights, so the idea of being at the top of a ladder does NOT equate to being happy for me.

Now I know it's a metaphor and not a literal ladder, but it does make me wonder if that association skews the results at all..

[IAmBroom]

Yes, I expect to hear a scale like this expressed as "where 10 is the best and 0 is the worst".

[sysguest]

"on which step of the ladder do you feel you personally stand at the present time?”

hmm maybe answering 10 means: I only expect my life to down-roll from now on?

[greygoo222]

That's a necessary feature. The best translation of "happy" in different countries can have very different connotations.

[euroderf]

That's why the ladder idea seems good: relatively mistranslation-proof.

For Finland, discussion seems to hinge on whether "happiness" is "close enough" to "contentedness".

[yencabulator]

I'm a Finn. I personally interpret that survey as Finland being the least unhappy place. There's a social safety net, health care is taken care of, you know your life won't get destroyed by the slightest misfortune, you get a good education for free, your surroundings are generally safe and well maintained, you feel safe & are fairly certain nothing bad will happen, there are people around you who share your values, life is good.

Things that for example the article author's favorite USA does not have. But of course a Murkin' can't accept that. I fully expect him to gripe that somehow the Corruption Perceptions Index is also somehow unfair to his favorite country too, and just cannot be right.

You had me at blaming "elites".

[euroderf]

Kind of a "Minimax" interpretation. Whereas in the USA, when you hit bottom it's so low that you probably ain't comin' up again.

[scotty79]

If I feel hopeless, I might think that I live best possible life for me (and answer 10) despite feeling deeply unhappy about it.

[crimsoneer]

I'm assuming part of this is it's not always asked in English...?