How do we know if we are happy or not?

When reading the How of Happiness I was first introduced to The Oxford Happiness Questionnaire. It tries to answer this question in a standardised and scientific way – so that we can compare our own results over time and see if we get happier or not, and also to compare our score with that of other people.

The Guardian has created an interactive version of the questionnaire which you can take here. It consists of 29 simple questions and shouldn't take more than a few minutes to complete.

The lowest possible score you can get is 1, and the highest possible score is 6.

The average is around 4.30.

If you take the questionnaire now, it will be helpful to note down your score and today's date somewhere. Then you can compare against that at a later point, to see whether you've made any progress in becoming a happier person.

There are of course a myriad of other happiness questionnaires, but I found this one helpful.



Header photo by Tetyana Kovyrina (CC0 / Public domain).

