In search of happiness

Press, Volume CXIV, Issue 33712, 9 December 1974, Page 24

In search of happiness

(N.Z.P.A.-Reuter—Copyright)

NEW YORK.

The veteran American pollster. Dr George Gallup, is making a global survey to find out what makes people happy.

Announcing the project in New York, he said that the survey was intended to draw up an index of the psychological well-being of the peoples of the world.

"We hope to find out the extent to which people’s satisfaction is dependent on material goods. We are trying to get at people’s hopes and fears, their religious beliefs, their thinking on the place of women in the world, and find out what makes them happy,” he told the Foreign Press Association. When the survey, financed by the Kettering Foundation, of Dayton, Ohio, is complete, Dr Gallup expects his researchers to have questioned up to 15,000 people in about 100 countries. Negotiations are under way for permission to survey the Soviet Union and other East European States, but no research will be done in China. , , He emphasised that the

survey was non-political in nature, and that there would be no country-by-country comparisons. Among the questions to be asked are: “If you could live in any country in the world, which one would you live in?”; “Do you worry a lot?"; and “Would you be happier if your life could be changed?" Dr Gallup said: “I don’t know if happiness can be measured with 100 per cent accuracy, but this will be a start. This is the first time anyone has attempted to study human happiness systematically." Most of the research information should be completed by late January and the findings should be published about June.