WOMEN ARE NO HAPPIER THAN MEN
Women are no happier than men, according to new research that challenges previous work on women’s happiness compared with men’s and could cast doubt on the measures of wellbeing currently being discussed by the UK government.
The study by Raphael Studer
, to be presented at the Royal Economic Society’s 2012 annual conference, claims that the current method for measuring people’s happiness produces inaccurate results. Happiness questionnaires typically ask people to rank their happiness on a scale, such as from 0 to 9. Around 70% of respondents answer 7 or 8, and these same studies tend to show that women are generally happier than men.
But, the author argues, happiness is a continuous feeling, not something that we think of on a scale, and measures should reflect this fact. To show this, the study gave two happiness questionnaires to two representative groups in an online survey.
Both questionnaires asked the same happiness question, but the first gave respondents a scale of 0 to 9, while the second asked respondents to respond by clicking on a point on a line from low to high. The study found that, as in existing studies, the answers using a scale were clustered around 7 and 8. On the continuous scale, however, people moved closer to the boundaries, less conscious of avoiding either extreme.
This was especially the case for women. When comparing the two sets of responses, the distribution of women’s answers was significantly different. As in previous studies, the scale answers suggested that women were happier on average. But with the answers along a continuous line, this difference disappeared.
These results are particularly relevant to the current debate about using measures of happiness and wellbeing in government decision-making.
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Many articles have concluded that women are happier than men. But if a new happiness measure is used to investigate the determinants of happiness, the gender happiness inequality disappears. This is one conclusion of new research by Raphael
Studer, to be presented at the Royal Economic Society ’s 2012 annual conference.
It is a robust finding that the rich, the employed and women are happier. Almost all studies that have investigated these relationships used data produced by happiness survey questions. Such questions ask respondents to assess their happiness on a scale ranging from 0 to 9, for instance. It is widely known that almost 70% of all survey participants do so by answering a 7 or an 8.
Is there so little variation in happiness in the population? Or is reported happiness not replicating the true happiness distribution? And finally, what happens to all these stylised happiness facts once a new measurement is used?
These questions drove the author to implement two happiness questionnaires in a representative internet panel. Both questionnaires asked the same happiness question, but assessed it differently. One time participants self-assessed their happiness on a scale ranging from 0 to 9 and one time on a line. Respondents were randomly assigned

to one or the other questionnaire, such that the distributions of true happiness should not differ among the two groups. But the study finds that distributions of reported scores disagree between the two measures.
Participants using a discrete scale were found to avoid extreme categories. This response style resulted in clusters of answers in the categories 7 and 8. On the continuous scale, though, participants moved closer to the boundaries.
The author claims that the continuous scale provides more information by overcoming the endpoint aversion of scales that are too insensitive. Especially female participants were found to adjust their answers substantially. In contrast to male participants, female respondents were more likely to revise their answers downwards once they used the continuous measure. The changes for female participants were so important that the gender happiness inequality, apparent in the discrete data, disappeared with the continuous data.
The author claims that discrete measurements, assessing happiness on a Likert scale
(LS), for instance ranging from 0 to 9, are hardly to be motivated theoretically.
Happiness is a continuous feeling. But little effort has been undertaken to introduce more appropriate measurements by introducing new scales.
The method the author proposes, the visual analogue scale (VAS), is simply a line bounded by two endpoints. The VAS can easily be implemented and appropriately be measured in computer-based surveys.
The study conducted a randomised controlled experiment in the Longitudinal Internet
Study for Social Sciences based in the Netherlands. In March 2011 participants were randomly assigned to a happiness question using a LS or a happiness question employing a VAS. One month later the questions were asked again, but the scales inversed.
The analysis focused on three issues: data quality, happiness distributions and strength of happiness determinants. The study does not report any differences in data quality between the two rating scales. But substantial variation in happiness score distributions was found. Participants reported on average lower and wider spread happiness scores if they used the continuous measure. And the probability of answering close to the boundaries increased.
The study also analysed regressions of happiness scores on socio-economic factors for each rating scale. The relative importance of happiness determinants is not found to differ among scales. Except the happiness gender inequality, widely reported in studies using LS type data, disappeared with the VAS data.
In fact, women were found to react substantially to survey design. Female participants answered on average lower on the VAS than on the LS, whereas male participants adjusted their answers only marginally. The author concludes that the happiness gender inequality depends on question design.
What is there to learn from this study? With the development of new survey technologies, including internet panels, new methods can be designed. Researchers

should not get stuck with available measurements. This study shows that innovation in survey design may help to explain longstanding puzzles.
ENDS
‘Does it matter how happiness is measured? Evidence from a randomized controlled experiment
’ by Raphael Studer, University of Zurich
Contact:
Raphael Studer
+41 44 634 22 97
Email: raphael.studer@econ.uzh.ch