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Josh Davis

Happy World Happiness Day, to those who celebrate. And as a PSA, the World Happiness Report is bogus and everyone involved should be embarrassed and issue an apology. Newsflash: asking one question that doesn't mention happiness to a bunch of people is not going to tell you anything statistically meaningful about happiness.

...you might be forgiven for thinking that the report carefully assesses how happy each country in the world is according to a sophisticated methodology, one that likely involves both subjective and objective criteria. But upon closer examination, it turns out that the World Happiness Report is not based on any major research effort; far from measuring how happy people are with some sophisticated mix of indicators, it simply compiles answers to a single question asked to comparatively small samples of people in each country: “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?”
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Josh Davis

@sofiav Probably something that was extensively A/B tested to ensure that Scandinavians would answer the highest. If someone asked me that, I would say, "well my expectations are extremely low...so 10?"

Josh Davis

@sofiav Actually, the first thing I would say is "ladders have rungs, not steps."

Mar 20, 2025, 02:41 PM·Public
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