Survey Design and Response Analysis: a Study on Happiness, Life Satisfaction and Well-being in Piedmont, a Region of Italy.

In the literature of happiness economics individual subjective utility is measured by directly asking individuals to self-assess their level of utility, usually on a nu merical scale, using various terms such as happiness, life satisfaction and well-being, most of the times taki ng for granted that they are synonymous. Despite th e richness of happiness economics literature, several terminologi cal and methodological issues still need to be inve stigated. This paper presents the results of a field survey conduc ted in the Region of Piedmont (Northern Italy) by means of 1250 face-to-face interviews, financed by Piedmont Gover nment, in order to assess the level of happiness, l ife satisfaction and quality of life using three differ ent scales: a verbal one (7 steps from, say, very u nhappy to very happy, a unipolar cardinal scale (from 1 to 7) and bipolar cardinal scale (from -3 to 3). We have also examined the effects of wording and scales on those that turned out to be the main determinants of the three notion s. We show that wording clearly matters: not only each subject (in most cases) self-reports differently her/his o wn happiness, life satisfaction and well-being and therefore they may be similar but not equivalent notions, but als o their determinants turn out to be different. Moreover, we find that the use of different scales leads to dif ferent results. However, a clear pattern does not emerge: therefore we cannot state which numerical scale performs bet ter in representing the verbal self-reported valuations