The scale you completed on the first page was the "Satisfaction with Life Scale," developed by Ed Diener, the leading researcher on happiness, at the University of Illinois.

The scale is a measure of your general happiness level. Despite its simplicity, the scale has been found to do a good job of measuring people's general state of "subjective well-being." It is widely used, in many nations.

We are interested in measuring happiness on this site because many studies have found that religious people are happier than non-believers, and some have found that politcally conservative people are slightly happier than are political liberals, even after controlling statistically for religiosity. A recent Gallup survey found that religiosity was associated with better mental health for Republicans, but it didn't make a difference for Democrats. We want to investigate these complex relationships among happiness, morality, religion, and ideology.

In the graph below, your score is shown in green. The scores of all people who have taken the scale on our site is in purple. Scores run from 1 (the lowest possible score, least happy) to 7 (the highest possible score, most happy).








To learn more about Diener's research on happiness, and about his "Satisfaction with Life" scale and how to compare your score to others, please see Diener's website.