Thanks for writing this up. I agree that ESM is the theoretically ideal measure of happiness. I made a few comments on a recent post about QALYs vs ESM I thought I should link too here.
A couple of other comments. First, I’d be happy to chat to you about this. Do get in contact.
Second, SWB measures are increasingly being taken seriously. See the global happiness policy report and the fact 170,000 articles and books have been published on SWB in the last 15 years and the graph below for a change over time. However, the focus on mainly on life satisfaction, rather than on ESM measures, and looks set to stay that way. The reason for this is a combination of (a) some SWB researchers, e.g. Helliwell, think life satisfaction, not happiness, is what matters, (b) it’s easier and cheaper to collect data on life satisfaction, (c) as a result of (b), there is much more work that has been done to established what will increase life satisfaction, which is what is needed to guide policy and do cost-effectiveness—see my happiness manifesto post and Origins of Happiness for more, (d) as a result of the fact more work has been done with life satisfaction, there is now path dependence where it’s easier to use life satisfaction because other researchers are/have.
Third, have you had an take up from researchers on this? If they’d said they aren’t interested, did they give reasons?
To follow up on Michael’s last point here: Natalia, do you have any interest in collaborating with academics to feed results from your app to a new version of disability weighting? (He mentioned in his other comment that some academics were working on it but stopped.)
I also posted a comment on the other post outlining challenges you need to overcome to generate rigorous measures for disability weights (e.g. low take-up, unrepresentative sample).
Seems like the Gates Foundation which is funding the Global Burden of Disease study should be interested in funding a rigorous study since this is basically improving a component of DALY measures. (You likely need to partner with academics.)
Thanks for writing this up. I agree that ESM is the theoretically ideal measure of happiness. I made a few comments on a recent post about QALYs vs ESM I thought I should link too here.
A couple of other comments. First, I’d be happy to chat to you about this. Do get in contact.
Second, SWB measures are increasingly being taken seriously. See the global happiness policy report and the fact 170,000 articles and books have been published on SWB in the last 15 years and the graph below for a change over time. However, the focus on mainly on life satisfaction, rather than on ESM measures, and looks set to stay that way. The reason for this is a combination of (a) some SWB researchers, e.g. Helliwell, think life satisfaction, not happiness, is what matters, (b) it’s easier and cheaper to collect data on life satisfaction, (c) as a result of (b), there is much more work that has been done to established what will increase life satisfaction, which is what is needed to guide policy and do cost-effectiveness—see my happiness manifesto post and Origins of Happiness for more, (d) as a result of the fact more work has been done with life satisfaction, there is now path dependence where it’s easier to use life satisfaction because other researchers are/have.
Third, have you had an take up from researchers on this? If they’d said they aren’t interested, did they give reasons?
To follow up on Michael’s last point here: Natalia, do you have any interest in collaborating with academics to feed results from your app to a new version of disability weighting? (He mentioned in his other comment that some academics were working on it but stopped.)
I also posted a comment on the other post outlining challenges you need to overcome to generate rigorous measures for disability weights (e.g. low take-up, unrepresentative sample).
Seems like the Gates Foundation which is funding the Global Burden of Disease study should be interested in funding a rigorous study since this is basically improving a component of DALY measures. (You likely need to partner with academics.)