Happiness, Positive Psychology and Measurement

Recently the OECD's Better Life Index has made some headlines, this example is from the Guardian and has the headline:

World's happiest OECD countries: in full

 A little reading around the headline quickly shows that this is not subjective happiness, it is based on eleven topics, Housing, Income, Jobs, Community, Education, Environment, Civic Engagement, Health, Life Satisfaction, Safety and Work-Life Balance.

 It does with the inclusion of Life Satisfaction include one subjective measure, which is assessed by survey. The ranking of the countries on this one measure can be seen here and a discussion on trying to measure subjective life satisfaction can be found here.

So this is about happiness as such, however having recently seen a talk on happiness by my friend and colleague Dave Webster I have been thinking about measuring happiness.

Measuring Happiness

Can happiness be measured?

Positive psychologists are investigating ways to measure happiness, they have one measure under construction (Authentic Happiness Inventory) and two other measures of happiness, the General Happiness Scale and the Fordyce Emotions Questionnaire. All of these are accessible via Dr. Martin Seligman's homepage, although you have to register to take the tests. In the interest of disclosure last time I took these tests my scores were, Authentic Happiness, 4.04 out of 5; General Happiness Scale, 7 out of 7; and 9 out of 10 on the Fordyce Emotions Questionnaire. All of these are quite high scores compared to most people that fill in the scales, I lost points on Authentic Happiness by scoring low on questions like question 4,

A. My life does not have any purpose or meaning.

B. I do not know the purpose or meaning of my life.

C. I have a hint about my purpose in life.

D. I have a pretty good idea about the purpose or meaning of my life.

E. I have a very clear idea about the purpose or meaning of my life.

and question 12,

A. In the grand scheme of things, my existence may hurt the world.

B. My existence neither helps nor hurts the world.

C. My existence has a small but positive effect on the world.

D. My existence makes the world a better place.

E. My existence has a lasting, large, and positive impact on the world.

I think that happiness can be measured at least as well (or as badly) as any other psychological object. As I detail in Chapter Nine of Tyson, Jones and Elcock there are problems with the whole psychometric enterprise, and measurements, be they attitudes, intelligence, personality, happiness or character strengths, are at best culturally and historically contingent and have meaning only in relation to the populations they have been developed within. For the happiness scale currently under development that population appears to be anglophone web users who are interested enough in the topic to use the website.

One of the dangers of all of these measuring tools is that they reify a particular working through of a concept, and that in turn may act as a political tool to promote one notion of what human beings are like.

All such measuring tools suffer from what Rom Harré called the 'meaning problem' which he applied more generally to the testing conditions in which psychology investigations take place. The problem is that people participating in a psychological experiment or survey may bring a variety of meanings to the situation, only some of which will match with what the investigator intends them to be. In effect these measuring scales may be measuring a varieties of happiness, not a single thing.

Multi-item scales tend to have better psychometric validity than single item scales, which leads to a second problem, people can respond to the individual items completely differently and yet be given the same overall score.

Finally there are a set of technical problems because the basis for these scales being equal interval scales is a, probably misapplied, principle of psychophysics, the just noticeable difference, which makes sense for an individual case, but may not when using aggregated data.

So can happiness be measured, a qualified yes. I prefer the types of metrics that the OECD use rather than the attempts to measure individual subjective happiness. If you believe personality tests measure personality, attitude scales measure attitudes or intelligence tests measure intelligence then happiness scales are just as good!

 

 

Division of Clinical Psychology Position Statement on Classification

The British Psychological Society, Division of Clinical Psychology, released this position statement yesterday. Some elements of it were discussed on Sunday in the Observer and on other media outlets.

What I intend to do here is briefly comment on each of the major sections of the statement.

Context

Much of the emphasis is on schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, personality disorder, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, conduct disorders rather than dementia, neuropsychology and learning disability. As the positions statement makes clear there has been considerable disquiet and debate about those diagnostic categories for over a decade. There is also growing disquiet about the ever increasing reach of diagnostic categories into everyday life and the medicalising of more and more aspects of everyday life.

The position statement is careful to note that biological factors are not being ignored, but that the primacy given to them by a disease model needs to be challenged.

The Role of Clinical Psychologists

Obviously the position statement re-affirms the role of clinical psychologists.

The Rationale for a Paradigm Shift

I am normally uneasy with the term paradigm shift being used in the social sciences, however this position statement does the use the term to mean a fundamental shift in world view, which would seem to fit well with the original meaning.

Core Issue 1: Concepts and models

Six conceptual issues are described:

1. Interpretation presented as objective fact
2. Limitations in validity and reliability
3. Restrictions in clinical utility and functions
4. Biological emphasis
5. Decontextualisation
6. Ethnocentric bias

While these are not a surprise to me it is apparent that much of that debate has not penetrated that far outside of the academy.

Core issue 2: Impact on service users

1. Discrimination
2. Stigmatisation and negative impact on identity
3. Marginalising knowledge from lived experience
4. Disempowerment

The hope is that this paradigm shift can address these issues.

There then follow five action points.

Action point 1
To share within the DCP and through pre-qualification training and continuing
professional development, the issues raised by this statement. The aim is to
achieve greater openness and transparency about the uses and limitations of
the current system, and enhance service users’ and carers’ awareness and
understanding of the issues.

Action point 2
To open up dialogue with partner organisations, service users and carers,
voluntary agencies, and other professional bodies in order to find agreed ways
forward. This will necessarily include safeguarding access to health and
social care, benefits, work support, and legal and educational services that are
currently diagnosis-based.

Action point 3
To support work, in conjunction with service users, on developing multifactorial
and contextual approaches which incorporate social, psychological
and biological factors.

 Action point 4
To ensure that a psychosocial perspective and psychological work are
included in the electronic health record.

Action point 5
For the DCP to continue to promote the use of psychological formulation as
one response to the concerns identified in this statement. 

 I feel in addition to these actions there is a need to enter into dialogue with people in general, as well as service users, carers and partner organisations.

Brains, Reality and Mental Distress

The Observer today has a number of interesting articles.

How to Spot a Murder's Brain

Psychiatrists under fire in mental health battle
  
Medicine's big new battleground: does mental illness really exist?
 
Do we need to change the way we are thinking about mental illness?

Although the comments section after each of them are frustrating and annoying.


Three of them, all but the 'Murder's Brain' are part of a series brought about by the statement to be released on Monday 13 May from the Division of Clinical Psychology of the British Psychological Society calling for a fundamental re-thinking of how professionals understand and treat mental distress.

After that statement is released I will have a go at saying more about it.

Meanwhile mental distress exists and sometimes people need help with it from a range of sources including medicine. One of the potential upsides is that people will start looking beyond medicine at ways to make mental distress less likely and to ameliorate its effects. One of the potential down sides of moving away from the medical model is that it will become an excuse for further cutting the already inadequate services for people with mental distress. It is also important that we do not jump into the Positive Psychology position of just helping individuals with building up resilience but look at broader social and societal issues as well.