Browsing by Subject "happiness"

This thesis explores social representations of nature and happiness in nature among Finnish youth. Even though the concepts of happiness and nature are common in daily exchanges, they remain difficult to define, and little is known of their usage among laypeople. Similarly, nature’s effects on well-being are well documented, but how happiness occurs in nature has not been examined through social representations. Finland is an interesting country to study these phenomena, as Finland is often portrayed through its unique nature, and has been ranked as the happiest country in the world for three consecutive years. The purpose of this thesis is to examine how Finnish youth discuss happiness in nature, and whether there are distinctive shared social representations. The study used Moscovici’s Social Representations Theory as a theoretical framework. The theory’s purpose is to explore laypeople’s conceptions of everyday phenomena, making it suitable for this research. The research was part of a bigger LUODE-project, funded by the European Social Fund. LUODE aims to develop multidisciplinary collaboration and service innovations for youth. University of Helsinki’s role was to better understand the everyday lives of the youth and this research contributes to the latter aim. The participants consisted of 15-16-year-old Lahti 9th graders (n=355). They first saw a marketing video of Finland aimed at foreign visitors, in which the main theme was the experience of happiness in nature. They were then asked to write their responses to a paper questionnaire, with questions like “What does the video say about happiness in your opinion? Discuss, whether nature makes you happy? Why yes? Why not?”. Responses varied in length from one word to lists, and from sarcastic comments to personal, even poetic, descriptions of happiness in nature. This research will focus on their personal accounts, and when combined, these created shared social representations. The research questions were: What are the shared ideas the youth have about nature, and of happiness in nature? How are these social representations objectified or anchored? Do the youth have shared social representations about nature, and more specifically about happiness in nature? As a result of the research questions, the analysis identified two main themes. First, nature was defined through shared lay perceptions, and nature in the societal context of Finland. It was clear that there was not just one simplistic definition of nature among the youth. Instead, their descriptions varied from common objectifications of nature, like cleanliness, forests, and summer cabins, to societal issues including the national welfare system, and global issues like climate change. Second, happiness in nature was experienced in a holistic manner: nature was a place for peace of mind, for activities, and for sensory engagement. These representations of happiness revealed holistic, and multisensory experiences of happiness when spending time in nature. The results show that Finnish youth go to nature to relax, be active, and be mindful and that their experiences in nature involve multisensory approaches, which all contributed to their experiences of happiness. Multisensory experiences as social representations may offer new insights for future research. These representations explicate how detailed and varying the everyday terms of happiness and nature are. Nature served as an important milieu for daily moments of happiness among the youth. Finnish youth also criticized the claims in the video and discussed the influence of the Finnish welfare system as well as climate change in their responses. The current study proposes that these holistic and multisensory methods to experience happiness in nature should be taken into account when planning well-being interventions, city planning, and nature preservation.

Previous studies have reported that children are globally very happy. Happiness studies with Finnish students have shown that Finnish children are also very happy but their happiness and school related happiness decrease during secondary school. The purpose of this study is to explore happiness and school related happiness among sixth and ninth graders in Steiner school. Secondly, the purpose is to explore which factors would increase students' happiness in their opinions. Furthermore the purpose is to explore if the level of happiness among ninth graders changes after sixth grade. The hypothesis of this study is that Steiner school students are happier due the conception of human in Steiner school, Steiner pedagogy and the model of comprehensive school that has less pressure in school transitions than in compulsory school. Steiner pedagogy is alternative pedagogy which interests a student of special pedagogy. In this study happiness and school related happiness were measured among 282 students from six different Steiner schools. There were 142 sixth graders and 138 ninth graders who answered the questionnaire. Students filled out the questionnaire which included the Subjective Happiness Scale and the Finnish version of the School Children's Happiness Inventory. In addition, students chose the factors that would increase their happiness. Ninth graders were also asked if the level of their happiness had changed after sixth grade and what they think the reasons for the change might be. The quantitative material was analyzed with SPSS-program and open answers were organized with qualitative methods. Sixth and ninth graders in Steiner school were less happy than in previous happiness studies but their school related happiness was on about the same level than in previous studies. The students' happiness and school related happiness decreased during secondary school. In the ninth grade, the girls' happiness was on a lower level than the boys'. The factors that increased happiness differed little among sixth and ninth graders and also among boys and girls. The factors that the girls consider to influence their happiness might tell us something about their lower happiness

The great amount of both academic and political interest towards subjective well-being causes also demand for a more thorough and comprehensive understanding of the concept. Hence, in the present thesis, a longitudinal data analysis about the relationship between subjective well-being and objective well-being outcomes and opportunities is conducted. The indicators for subjective well-being are happiness and life satisfaction. The indicators for objective well-being are operationalised from two theories. The first theory is Richard Layard’s (2011) Seven Causes for Happiness, which helps to define objective well-being outcomes that may be associated with one’s subjective well-being. The Seven causes for happiness are family relationships, financial situation, work, community and friends, health, per-sonal freedom and personal values. The second theory is the capability approach by Amartya Sen (1993), which enables to study the difference between outcomes and opportunities. The capabilities are mostly about satisfaction in different domains in life (satisfaction with partner, job, household income, social life, neighbourhood, and leisure time), but also financial manageability, health limitations, ability to vote, voluntary and political group memberships. The data are drawn from the British Household Panel Survey, which is a nationally representative longitudinal survey of nearly 10 000 individuals over 16 years of age in the United Kingdom. The analysis is based on 12 waves, which enables to explore whether the objective well-being factors, that might have changed in the life of an individual, have an impact on one’s subjective well-being. In addition, the difference between the two indicators of subjective well-being, that is, happiness and life satisfaction is investigated. Analyses were performed using linear mixed-effects models. The results suggest that the most significant domains associated with better subjective well-being were family relationships, community and friends, and health. Work domain explained happiness almost twice as much than life satisfaction, and personal freedom domain explained life satisfaction better than happiness. Financial situation, personal values and demographics (age and gender) domains received the lowest significance. Compared to the results with the previous studies, the main similarities were with health and social relationships factors, which in the previous studies as well as in the current study were both significantly associated with subjec-tive well-being. The main differences between the results of the present study and the results of the previous studies were with the factors of employment, income, and having a partner. According to the previous studies, having a job, higher income, and having a partner increased one’s subjective well-being, but in the present analyses the directions of the associations were the opposite. The results indicate that the fact that one has a job, higher income or a partner does not bring itself happiness or satisfaction, but the fact that one is satisfied with one’s job, income or partner, does. According to the present analysis, opportunities in general received much higher predicting power than did the outcomes. Consequently, how satisfied one is in certain life domains seem to matter more to overall life satisfaction and happiness than a fixed outcome.

This thesis is about the World Happiness Report and Finland. Finland has been chosen as the world’s “happiest country” for four consecutive years from 2018 to 2021 in the World Happiness Report and is often reported as the “happiest country” in both national and international media outlets. Yet many Finns seem to question the idea of Finland as the “happiest country” in the world. This paper explores both why Finland ranks high in the World Happiness Report and why Finns tend not to agree with the results. It examines the concept of happiness in scholarly literature and analyzes the responses to a questionnaire regarding Finns’ attitudes toward the report. The leading hypothesis is that the usage of the particular word “happiness” is a major reason why Finnish people tend not to believe the results of the World Happiness Report. The research consists of two parts. The first part analyzes the concept of happiness and topics around happiness in relation to the World Happiness Report. It also overviews how the related terms, such as subjective well-being and life satisfaction, are used in the World Happiness Report. It shows happiness is a concept that can be understood in various ways and that the term happiness is ambiguously used in the World Happiness Report. In addition, topics related to happiness and life satisfaction in Finland are also discussed to present that life satisfaction in Finland has been high but that the feeling of happiness may be different. The second part is social research using a questionnaire survey. The survey asked Finns how they think about the results of the World Happiness Report. The results of the survey support the hypothesis that ambiguously used terms would be one of the reasons why Finns tend not to agree with the results of the World Happiness Report. Overall, the conclusion is that Finland’s high ranking in the World Happiness Report owes much to the contentment with the current situation explained by the social structure with comprehensive support. More Finns would agree with the results of the World Happiness Report if the report stated more clearly that the ranking is based on people’s life evaluations instead of using the term happiness.