Measuring happiness with a single-item scale

By A. Abdel-Khalek. 2006

794 citations recorded by the source corpus.

In this study we examined the accuracy of measuring happiness by a single item (Do you feel happy in general?) answered on an 11-point scale (0-10). Its temporal stability was 0.86. The correlations between the single item and both the Oxford Happiness Inventory (OHI; Argyle, Martin, & Lu, 1995; Hills & Argyle, 1998) and the Satisfaction with Life Scale (Diener, Emmons, Larsen, & Griffin, 1985; Pavot & Diener, 1993) were highly significant and positive, denoting good concurrent validity. Moreover, the single item had a good convergent validity because it was highly and positively correlated with optimism, hope, self-esteem, positive affect, extraversion, and self-ratings of both physical and mental health. Furthermore, the divergent validity of the single item has been adequately demonstrated through its significant and negative correlations with anxiety, pessimism, negative affect, and insomnia. It was concluded that measuring happiness by a single item is reliable, valid, and viable in community surveys as well as in cross-cultural comparisons.

Subfields: Applied Psychology, General Health Professions, Social Psychology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/e831c511884a30eda7bedba4225983c8aa97828c

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In Applied Psychology

In General Health Professions

In Social Psychology

Citations in the corpus

Associations between religiosity, mental health, and subjective well-being among Arabic samples from Egypt and Kuwait (2012, background): “Criterion-related validity of these scales were adequately demonstrated (Abdel-Khalek, 2003 , 2006b , 2007a ).”
Does perceived restorativeness mediate the effects of perceived biodiversity and perceived naturalness on emotional well-being following group walks in nature? (2016, methodology): “Happiness was assessed with a single item (Abdel-Khalek, 2006).”
Sport Participation and Happiness Among Older Adults: A Mediating Role of Social Capital (2020, methodology): “The single item scale developed and validated by Abdel-Khalek (2006) was used to measure general feelings of happiness.”
Spirituality, Religiousness, and Happiness in Children Aged 8–12 Years (2010, methodology): “Several studies have reported similar positive relations including that spirituality or religiousness is associated with life satisfaction (Kelley and Miller 2007), happiness (Abdel-Khalek 2006; Argyle 2001; Francis et al. 2000, 2003a; French and Joseph 1999), and well-being (Ciarrocchi and Deneke 2”
Making a Difference Matters: Impact Unlocks the Emotional Benefits of Prosocial Spending (2013, neutral): “6 measure (Abdel-Khalek, 2006) and an abbreviated 2-item version of the Subjective Happiness Scale (α = .”
The ‘Short Five’ (S5): Measuring Personality Traits Using Comprehensive Single Items (2012, background): “Impossibility of computing internal consistency reliability coefficients is often cited as a shortcoming of single-item measures (e.g. Herzberg & Brähler, 2006), and has even been called their ‘most obvious limitation’ (Abdel-Khalek, 2006).”
Trust in the employer: the role of high-involvement work practices and procedural justice in European organizations (2011, methodology): “Abdel-Khalek 2006 ) and has been identified as a robust method for measuring overall global assessments (Cummins 1995 ; Bergkvist and Rossiter 2007 ).”
The relationships between subjective well-being, health, and religiosity among young adults from Qatar (2013, background): “Criterion-related validity of these scales have been adequately demonstrated (Abdel-Khalek, 2003, 2006b, 2007a, 2011a).”
Moments, not minutes: The nature-wellbeing relationship (2021, methodology): “Additionally, these items (or very similar) have been used successfully in similar contexts and have been found to correlate highly with respective multi-item scales of happiness and meaning in life (Abdel-Khalek, 2006; Cheung & Lucas, 2014; Oishi & Diener, 2013; Richardson et al., 2016; Richardson ”
Temperament and Happiness in Children (2010, methodology): “Single item measures of happiness are reliable, valid and commonly used ( Abdel-Khalek 2006; Harry 1976; Stull 1988).”
Self-Reported Wisdom and Happiness: An Empirical Investigation (2011, positive): “Single item happiness measures have been shown to have good concurrent and convergent validity and seem to be reliable, valid, and viable in community surveys (Abdel-Khalek 2006).”
Religiosity, subjective well-being, self-esteem, and anxiety among Kuwaiti Muslim adolescents (2011, background): “Criterion-related validity of these scales were adequately demonstrated (Abdel-Khalek, 2006b , 2007a, in press).”
Scaffolding cognitive and metacognitive strategy instruction in regular class lessons (2012, positive): “Furthermore, Abdel-Khalek (2006) found that a single item scale for happiness was reliable, valid and viable, with highly significant correlations in the expected directions with multiple item benchmark scales.”
Religiosity, happiness, health, and psychopathology in a probability sample of Muslim adolescents (2007, methodology): “In comparing the present results among adolescents with previous findings in college students (Abdel-Khalek, 2006a), all Kuwaiti Muslims, it was found that adolescents attained higher mean scores on both religiosity and happiness than college students in both sexes.”
Feeling Good About Giving: The Benefits (and Costs) of Self-Interested Charitable Behavior (2009, background): “participants reported their general happiness on a one item happiness scale (Abdel-Khalek, 2006) which simply asked participants "Do you feel happy, in general?” Analyses revealed that”