As you’ve pointed out, the questions are very different. The Gallup Poll asks people to rank their current position in life from “the best possible” to the “worst possible” on a ten point scale which implies that unequal opportunities and outcomes matter a lot.
The IPSOS poll avoids any sort of implicit comparison with how much better things could otherwise have been or actually is for others, and simply asks whether they would describe themselves as (very) happy or not (at all) on a simpler 4 point scale which is collapsed to a yes/no answer for the ranking
So Chinese and Indian people aren’t being asked whether they’re conscious of the many things they lack which could make their life better like in the Gallup poll, they’re being asked whether they feel so bad about their life they wish to describe themselves as unhappy (or, for various other questions “unsatisfied”). People tend to be biased towards saying they’re happy and there’s likely to be a cultural component to how willing people are to say they’re not too
And to add to the complications, the samples are non-random and not necessarily equivalent. IPSOS acknowledge their developing country samples are significantly more affluent, urban and educated than the population, which might explain why even when it comes to their personal finances they’re often more “satisfied” than inhabitants of countries with much higher median incomes. Gallup doesn’t admit that sampling bias, but even if it’s present to exactly the same extent (it’s bound to be present to some extent; poor, rural illiterate people are hard to randomly survey) it probably doesn’t have the same effect. Indian professionals can simultaneously be “happy” with their secure-by-local standards position in life and aware that their life outcomes could have been a whole lot better.
Think the stark differences are a good illustration of the limits to subjective wellbeing data, but arguably neither survey captures SWB particularly well anyway, the former because it asks people to make a comparison of [mainly objective] outcomes and the latter because the scale is too simple to capture hedonic utility.
As you’ve pointed out, the questions are very different. The Gallup Poll asks people to rank their current position in life from “the best possible” to the “worst possible” on a ten point scale which implies that unequal opportunities and outcomes matter a lot.
The IPSOS poll avoids any sort of implicit comparison with how much better things could otherwise have been or actually is for others, and simply asks whether they would describe themselves as (very) happy or not (at all) on a simpler 4 point scale which is collapsed to a yes/no answer for the ranking
So Chinese and Indian people aren’t being asked whether they’re conscious of the many things they lack which could make their life better like in the Gallup poll, they’re being asked whether they feel so bad about their life they wish to describe themselves as unhappy (or, for various other questions “unsatisfied”). People tend to be biased towards saying they’re happy and there’s likely to be a cultural component to how willing people are to say they’re not too
And to add to the complications, the samples are non-random and not necessarily equivalent. IPSOS acknowledge their developing country samples are significantly more affluent, urban and educated than the population, which might explain why even when it comes to their personal finances they’re often more “satisfied” than inhabitants of countries with much higher median incomes. Gallup doesn’t admit that sampling bias, but even if it’s present to exactly the same extent (it’s bound to be present to some extent; poor, rural illiterate people are hard to randomly survey) it probably doesn’t have the same effect. Indian professionals can simultaneously be “happy” with their secure-by-local standards position in life and aware that their life outcomes could have been a whole lot better.
Think the stark differences are a good illustration of the limits to subjective wellbeing data, but arguably neither survey captures SWB particularly well anyway, the former because it asks people to make a comparison of [mainly objective] outcomes and the latter because the scale is too simple to capture hedonic utility.