Happiness Analyzer Smartphone Application

Short Description: Understanding whether nationally representative datasets can be collected using apps to collect data is crucial. To address this question, we built a new happiness app. In the first year (2015), participants did not receive any reward, and in the second year (2016), a different group of participants received a 50 Euro Amazon voucher for their participation.

Methodological Details: The eight chapter of Ludwigs’ doctoral thesis contains a detailed report of the methodology. pdf

Incentives: In the first wave of the module (2015), participants did not get any reward for using the study app. In the second wave (2016), they were offered a 50 Euro Amazon voucher for using the app.

Available Papers:

Ludwigs, Kai, Richard Lucas, Ruut Veenhoven, David Richter, and Lidia Arends. 2019. Can Happiness Apps Generate Nationally Representative Datasets? - a Case Study Collecting Data on People’s Happiness Using the German Socio-Economic Panel. Applied Research in Quality of Life (online first). (https://doi.org/10.1007/s11482-019-09723-2 );

Ludwigs, Kai. 2018. The Happiness Analyzer: A New Technique for Measuring Subjective Well-Being (thesis). Rotterdam: Erasmus University Rotterdam.

Contact	Year	Respondents	Dataset	Variables	Availability	Field	Method
Kai Ludwigs, Happiness Research Organisation [E-Mail],`Richard E. Lucas <https://msu.edu/~lucasri/lucas.html>`_, Michigan State University [E-Mail]	2015,2016	>4000	inno	im_app, ihaappev, appe, ihaapp, app, ihamobbs, appev1, ihaappev1, ihaappe, im_hap2016, appev, ihamob, ihaapph, ihamobsp	04/2018	Psychology	Experience sampling & day reconstruction method