Science and the elusive path to measuring human happiness: ‘There are no 100% reliable methods’

Science and the elusive path to measuring human happiness: ‘There are no 100% reliable methods’

There are areas where science has no choice but to take risks. Researchers who dare to explore these muddy fields must grapple with the subjective, ambiguous, and even ethically sensitive aspects of their objects of study. The analysis of human happiness is one of those ambiguous areas. For almost a century, scholars have been trying, without reaching agreement, to define, observe, and measure the well-being or flourishing of a society under the rigor of the scientific method. But how? How can a dimension as elusive and mutating as happiness be organized, structured, and systematized? After decades and decades of mulling over this question, some experts are beginning to come up with something that might resemble an answer.

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