We will examine the science of happiness in this discussion. It will serve as an example for how we should examine other such constructs throughout the course. You will do a bit of survey research in this activity. Begin by listing, in rank order, three to five factors that you think are important in your own happiness. Next ask 10 family members of friends the same question. Keep track of their age and gender as well as their responses. Do not include their names. Summarize the lists. Do not just post the data you collected. Summarize what you found. What emerges as the three most important factors? Do these differ by age or gender? Finally, we will look at how many commonsense notions about happiness appear to be inaccurate when examined from an empirical standpoint. Find an article on an academic website (one with an edu suffix) about the science of happiness. How do your findings relate to this “expert” information? How do you know the information is “expert”? This part of the assignment should be on the second page…….Begin by completing the assignment activity above called Zippy (your answers will be submitted- the default score is zero since completion is required. It is not graded. If you do not complete Zippy before doing this discussion, you will lose 3 points). Do not post the answers to Zippy here – you must complete the submission in the assignment area. In this discussion, explain why you think this would be a good study or not. If you think it is not a good study, how would you improve it? Why do we have to be careful when reading research in the news? Can you recall any correlations reported recently in the news? (Hint: a common example correlates some variable with various aspects of health). Was the correlation positive or negative? What are the various possible causal relationships related to this correlation? What can you conclude about reading research that is NOT in a peer-reviewed scientific journal?
#Happiness
