Download full text
(external source)
Citation Suggestion
Please use the following Persistent Identifier (PID) to cite this document:
https://hdl.handle.net/10419/75336
Exports for your reference manager
World database of happiness: example of a focused "findings archive"
[working paper]
Corporate Editor
Rat für Sozial- und Wirtschaftsdaten (RatSWD)
Abstract "Social scientists are producing an ever growing stream of research findings, which is ever more difficult to oversee. As a result, capitalization on earlier investment declines and accumulation of knowledge stagnates. This situation calls for more research synthesis and interest in synthetic techni... view more
"Social scientists are producing an ever growing stream of research findings, which is ever more difficult to oversee. As a result, capitalization on earlier investment declines and accumulation of knowledge stagnates. This situation calls for more research synthesis and interest in synthetic techniques is on the rise. To date attention has been focused on techniques for meta-analysis, with little attention paid to the preliminary step of bringing the available research findings together. What we need is 1) techniques for describing research findings in a comparable way, 2) a system for storing such descriptions in an easily accessible archive, 3) to which research findings can be added on a continuous basis. The World Database of Happiness is an example of such a tool. The archive is tailored to meet the requirements of assembling research findings on happiness; both distributional findings (how happy people are) and correlational findings (what things go together with happiness). With its focus on "findings" the system differs from data-archives that store "investigations" and from bibliographies that store "publications". As yet there is no established term to describe this tool for research synthesis. I call it a 'focused findings archive'. In this paper I describe how that works and discusses the strengths and weaknesses of this approach." (author's abstract)... view less
Keywords
research; scientific community; well-being; analysis; specialization; archives; comparative research; social scientist; quality of life; publication; methodology; information technology; data bank; data; happiness; empirical research; satisfaction with life
Classification
Information and Documentation, Libraries, Archives
Philosophy of Science, Theory of Science, Methodology, Ethics of the Social Sciences
Research Design
Document language
English
Publication Year
2011
City
Berlin
Page/Pages
63 p.
Series
RatSWD Working Paper Series, 169
Handle
https://hdl.handle.net/10419/75336
Status
Published Version; reviewed
Licence
Deposit Licence - No Redistribution, No Modifications
Data providerThis metadata entry was indexed by the Special Subject Collection Social Sciences, USB Cologne