Critical evaluation of measurement of happiness

Needless to say, the findings based on surveys of happiness and values have certain limitations. First of all, there is a lack of match between understanding of happiness and values between the laypersons and experts. Secondly, we are not so sure about reliability and validity of scales of happiness and values in different cultural settings. In case multiple items are used to measure happiness, there is a need to go for item analysis and check whether there are some items having too strong or too weak an effect on the overall scores. Thirdly, the meaning of or the factors of happiness may vary from one culture to another. Fourthly, the correlations between socio-economic factors and happiness reveal only macro-level relationships. It will be a folly to assume that the micro-level relationships are same as the macro-level relationships. Thus if there is a strong positive relationship between income and happiness it does not mean that all the rich people are happy. The macro-level correlations are certainly needed for policy making but they add little to theory making at the individual level. Lastly, there is no relationship between percentage unhappy and threat to society which often comes from a small number of people.