Gaël Brulé and Ruut Veenhoven
Social Indicators Research, 2017, 131(2), 853-870, DOI: 10.1007/s11205-016-1265-x Open Acess
ABSTRACT
Happiness in nations is typically measured in surveys using a single question. A common question is: 'All things considered, how satisfied or dissatisfied are you with your life as-a-whole these days on a scale from 0 to 10?'.The responses typically follow a uni-modal distribution with highest frequencies between 5 and 8. Yet in some nations, the percentage of 10 responses stands out and is higher than the percentage of 9 responses. In this paper we explore the prevalence of this '10-excess' pattern and check some possible explanations. We conclude that this 10-excess phenomenon is at least partly a matter of measurement bias. A correction for this bias increases the explanatory power.
Keywords: happiness, survey research, cross national, cultural bias, response tendencies