**1.4 Liveability theory**

This theory holds that happiness depends on the degree to which our living environment fits our needs and capacities. In this theory, 'needs' are seen as innate requirements for survival and distinguished from 'wants' in cognitive theories of happiness. Gratification of needs is seen to reflect in affective experience, which on its turn determines how much we like the life we live [6]. This theory predicts that happiness will change when living conditions improve or decline or when our capability to deal with these conditions gets better or worse.

These views are discussed in more detail in Veenhoven [6–9].

## **1.5 Research questions**

This chapter addresses the following questions:

1.Has average happiness in nations changed over time?

2.Did the COVID epidemic affect average happiness in nations?

*Did Average Happiness in Nations Change over the Years? DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.110156*

We limit these questions to whether average happiness has changed or not, and do not enter questions about possible determinants of change and stability of happiness in nations.

#### **1.6 Structure of this chapter**

We will first delineate the concept of happiness in more detail and identify valid measures of that concept in Section 2. We describe the source of our data on happiness in nations (the World Database of Happiness) in section 3. We explain how we use links to that online finding archive in Section 4. On that basis, we answer our research questions one by one in Section 5. We discuss these results in Section 6 and conclude in Section 7.

#### **2. Happiness**

#### **2.1 Concept**

We define happiness as the *subjective enjoyment of one's life-as-a-whole.* This notion is explained in more detail in Veenhoven [10].

#### **2.2 Components of happiness**

Within this notion of overall happiness, we distinguish two components of happiness, the *affective component*, how well one feels most of the time, and the cognitive component, to what extent one perceives to acquire from life what one wants. Research has shown that the affective component dominates in the overall evaluation of life [11].

#### **2.3 Measurement**

Since happiness is defined as something in our mind, it can be measured using questioning. A great variety of questions has been used, direct and indirect questions, single and multiple questions and questions on happiness in the past, present and future. In this chapter, we limit to *single direct questions on current happiness* [12].

#### **2.4 Selection of valid questions on happiness**

Not all questions ever used fit the above definition of happiness equally well. The questions used in this study have passed a check for face validity, which involved a close reading of the text. This kind of substantive validity testing differs from the usual practice of assessing validity using correlations, such as the correspondence between different questions in a scale (construct validity) and correlation with related phenomena (predictive validity). These correlational methods are suited for ill-defined 'sensitizing' concepts such as 'neuroticism' in psychology and 'alienation' in sociology. The correlations tell us that a series of questions measure something, though not precisely what.

In this case of happiness, we deal with a well-defined 'distinct' concept and can assess the correspondence between concept and measurement by comparing the text of a question with the definition of the concept; that is using logic. Several commonly used questions and questionnaires fail that test, as shown in Veenhoven [13, 14].

## **2.5 Some valid survey questions on happiness**

Two examples of questions on *overall happiness* are:


An example of a question on the *affective component* of happiness is:

	- a.I have not been cheerful for a long time, b.I am rarely cheerful, c.I am cheerful sometimes, d.I am cheerful not every day, but frequently, e.I am cheerful almost every day.

A much-used question on the *cognitive component* of happiness reads1 :

• Here is a picture of a ladder with steps numbered from 0 at the bottom to 10 at the top. Suppose that we say that the top of the ladder represents the best possible life for you and the bottom represents the worst possible life for you. On which step of the ladder would you personally feel to stand at the present time?

### **2.6 Classification of equivalent questions on happiness**

As illustrated in the above examples, questions differ in several ways, next to variation in conceptual focus, there is technical difference such as in lead phrase, time frame, number and wording of response options.

Ideally, comparison restricts to *identical* questions, which involves severe restriction to the number of cases. Therefore, we do with near-identical *equivalent* questions. Single survey questions are sorted by a combination of lead items, kind of response scale (verbal or numerical) and number of response options. The list of equivalent measure types is available at the end of the chapter, in the "Additional information" sections (Link 1). If you click on a type, you get an overview of all responses to that kind of question, sorted by nation and year.

#### **2.7 Transformation of responses to a common 0–10 numerical scale**

Comparison across equivalent questions further required that the observed degree of happiness is quantified on the same scale. This is done using techniques described in Kalmijn [15].

<sup>1</sup> This question is known as the 'Cantril ladder' and is seen to measure 'life-*evaluation'* while the above first example of a question on overall happiness is seen to tap '*life-satisfaction'*.

*Did Average Happiness in Nations Change over the Years? DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.110156*
