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Diana HarrelsonQuantitative MethodsSpring 2008
Happiness…
Is it really just a state of mind?
 
Testing Jane McGonigal’s hypothesison happiness against US responses tothe 1999-2000 World Values Survey.
Jane McGonigal’s job as a futurist is totrack trends and provide advice on howthose trends will affect people in thefuture. At this year’s SXSW InteractiveConference Jane McGonigal introducedin her keynote the Psychology of Happiness as a trend to track. She thenlaid out her hypothesis on four thingsrequired to make people happy:
*
 1.
 
Time spent with people we like2.
 
Chance to be a part of something bigger 3.
 
Satisfying work to do4.
 
Experience of being good atsomething
[McGonigal 2008]
It is interesting to note that none of thefour ideas presented here consider residence, income, education, health,age, sex, or ethnicity. For McGonigal,happiness moves beyond these typical boundaries and into ideas that are a littleless tangible.McGonigal considers the futuremeasurement of quality of life to be the“primary metric for evaluatinginteractive brands, services,environments and experiences.” She alsosuggests that in the future, “Value isdefined as a measurable increase in realhappiness, or well-being – the newcapital”.
(McGonigal 2008)
 The following report aims to testMcGonigal’s hypothesis in analyzinghappiness reported by residents of TheUnited States and their responses toquestions chosen to represent each of her four points. The US was chosen due toits high rate of happiness.
Fig 1: Where The Happy People Are
[New Scientist, October 2003]
Methods
The information presented here is basedon an analysis of data from the WorldValues Survey. This data is collectedthrough surveys and interviews of  people from several different countriesin an attempt to measure the state of socio-cultural, socio-political, socio-economic, religiosity, and moral valuesaround the world.
(Wikipedia, World ValuesSurvey)
The analysis consisted of testing thevariable ‘state of mind’ also presentedthroughout this paper as ‘happiness’against 34 other variables for statisticalsignificance. The purpose was to analyzewhether or not people who reported positively for each variable also reportedhigher levels of happiness compared tothose who reported negatively. Asecond round of analysis was then performed with the addition of sex to seeif being male or female had a separatestatistical significance. All variables thattested as statistically significant meetP
≤
.05.
 
3
Results
The first analysis tested the level of happiness reported by US respondents.Here, with a minor recode to filter outmissing data, a frequency analysis was performed on the variable ‘state of mind’.
Fig 2: US State of Mind
Out of 601 respondents 95% reported being either ‘quite happy’ or ‘veryhappy’ leaving only 5% to make up the‘not very happy’ and ‘not happy at all’categories. The four categories were thenrecoded into two categories of either ‘happy’ representing those that fell intothe 95% or ‘not happy’ representingthose that fell into the 5%.Time spent with people we likeThe next five variables all centered onspending time with groups of people andwere chosen to represent McGonigal’sfirst point, ‘time spent with people welike’. Each of the five variables wererecoded dichotomously representingthose that spent time with the specificgroup and those that did not. All other data was recoded as system missing. Thefirst wave of analysis focused on testingeach variable against happiness using acrosstabs analysis and chi-square for statistical significance. A second waveof testing was performed with theaddition of sex as a third variable. Sexwas also recoded dichotomously intomale or female, with all other datamarked as system missing.The first of these five variables testedwas ‘spending time with friends’.
Fig 3: Comparison between those who do and do notspend time with friends and their reported happiness.
The total and the breakdown between thesexes both tested to be statisticallysignificant. Though women who spenttime with friends reported a higher levelof happiness than men did, there was alarger gap in happiness between menwho spent time with friends and thosewho did not than there was for women.A test that was not run but could berelevant is what percentage of each sexis married and/or has children and doesspending time with a spouse and/or children have an effect on the rate of happiness reported as well as the amountof time available to spend with friends.The second of these five variables testedwas ‘spending time with parents’.
Fig 4: Comparison between those who do and do notspend time with parents and their reported happiness.
The test against the total proved to bestatistically significant and whenanalyzed by sex it was significant for women, but not for men. A considerationfor further study here is what effect doeshaving children or being married haveon the time one spends with one’s parents.
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