Qualitative Analysis for Sociological Study of Various Conditions of Happiness

What I would like to emphasize in this presentation is that now we need to try an analysis of contents (not contents analysis) based on qualitative data for the sociologicalstudy of “happiness.” To say it objectively, we need to examine the methods and effects of detective analysis of research data from interviews or open questionnaires.

 In this presentation, I will show the result of my examination. The examination had me analyze open questionnaires treating them as short interviews, made on Mexican university students, who as we all know tend to answer “very happy.” As a result, three clusters were found, according to the regions, with different "conditions for happiness." Feature keywords for happiness are; In the Capital, “above a certain economical level, nation and politics, charity-like service,” in Chiapas, the most southern border state, “economic problems, close people, religious consciousness,” in Puebla, a city in-between those, “autonomy or self-sufficiency,　‘around me’ or ‘social’  situations.” Naturally, many points are shared as well.

 Almost all the data used by social scientists for analysis about happiness always implicate measurement and scaling problems. We cannot completely solve those problems but can moderate their problem levels by changing the analysis levels from whole happiness to happiness within each cluster.

 This result shows two additional points, valuable to the future of sociology. One is the utility of detective analysis and research with a weaker hypothesis; different from the way with a strong hypothesis to prove, test and certify. Another is that open questionnaire, a system we cannot say we have utilized enough, can be an important source of quantitative data. With quantitative data like this, we can effectively classify and objectively treat the elements of “happiness.” Sociology has the method to do it and it must be an advantage to the other disciplines studying “happiness.”