New Article Forthcoming in Preventative Medicine

20 months ago I participated in a very informative, interdisciplinary workshop on human happiness and well-being at Harvard University. The conference organizers put all the brainstorming conclusions together to come up with some expansive, multi-disciplinary recommendations for measuring well-being. I was very delighted to learn today that the paper that came out of this project has been accepted for publication in Preventative Medicine.

This is the first time in my 20 year academic career that I have a journal publication that is not a single authored publication. Participating in this collaborative process was a fascinating learning experience for me. An edited book volume, with a new chapter contribution from me on positive biology and well ordered science, will also come out of this event in the next year or so.

Here is the abstract of the forthcoming article:

Measures of well-being have proliferated over the past decades. Very little guidance has been available as to which measures to use in what contexts. This paper provides a series of recommendations, based on the present state of knowledge and the existing measures available, of what measures might be preferred in which contexts. The recommendations came out of an interdisciplinary workshop on the measurement of wellbeing. The recommendations are shaped around the number of items that can be included in a survey, and also based on the differing potential contexts and purposes of data collection such as, for example, government surveys, or multi-use cohort studies, or studies specifically about psychological well-being. The recommendations are not intended to be definitive, but to stimulate discussion and refinement, and to provide guidance to those relatively new to the study of well-being.

Cheers,
Colin