Thursday, January 7, 2016

multiple panelists danced around the issue, but nobody really came out and said it: you can't get good data on "wellness" by asking people. and you certainly can't do it cross-culturally, as you're just collecting cultural bias. robust, my ass. it's doomed...

doomed!

up here in canada, for example, we'd say that we're doing just fine - and thank you for asking. a negative response would actually be considered socially unacceptable, as it's burdening others with one's own problems. it's less of a social responsibility like you see with the brits, and more of a kind of a groupthink-driven social ostracism; that is, if you give a negative response, you won't get asked by that person again and will probably be ignored by them altogether. all that politeness isn't just hubris. we actually demand social pleasantries as a pre-condition for participation in society. we do allow for our few minutes of hate daily, but it only goes towards acceptable targets - like sitting politicians, or american hockey teams that are doing well. a canadian wellness survey really means absolutely nothing internally, and becomes little more than useless data when compared to similar results from, say, uganda.

it's a shame, though, because i do think that this is a better idea than gdp. i just haven't a clue as to how to measure it, and may perhaps lean towards the idea that it's just fundamentally qualitative and outside of the realm of quantitative analysis.

in a functioning democracy, one would think this would actually be measured at the ballot box.