Writing our Way to Happiness - TaLeeza Earls

Writing Our Way to Happiness

In my Writ 1133-61 Writing and Research class, the big idea is “the pursuit of happiness”. During a six week experiment, we were given the task of keeping a mood log that tracked our daily happiness levels. Every day for six weeks, we recorded our mood three times a day based on a scale of 1-10. Half-way through the six-week period, we were given the opportunity to choose from a number of activities to examine how they would influence our overall happiness levels. In total, seven students, including myself, chose to create gratitude and reflection journals. Every night for three weeks we wrote about things we were most grateful for throughout the day and reflected on events that occurred throughout the day that had an effect on our overall happiness levels.

Our Results Showed…

There was little evidence to conclude that journaling every night for three weeks had a positive impact on the overall happiness levels of the seven participants. The participants generally chose to journal every night during the three weeks. The first graph displays the combined results of the happiness levels of the seven participants. Over the six week period, the happiness levels of the seven participants was around a level six. The second graph displays the change in nighttime happiness levels from the first three weeks to the last three weeks when the participants journaled. Although there was a slight increase in the overall happiness levels, there was not enough to conclude that journaling was the cause of this increase. This negates the hypothesis that journaling every night for three weeks would increase the overall happiness levels of the seven participants.

3 Ways to Conduct a Better Experiment

Our class experiment fell victim to many limitations. Our population size was very limited due to the number of overall participants in our study. We also did not conduct the experiment over a long enough period of time. This prevented us from receiving a large sample of data. We also did not set a control in our experiment. The participants were able to journal at any time throughout the day. They also determined their daily mood levels based on an open-ended mood scale. When participants are given the opportunity to self-report they can interpret the information differently from another participant. As a result, what one participant might consider to be a level 5 could be different from what another participant would consider to be a level 5.

In order to conduct a better experiment, follow these three simple steps:

Increase the Population Size: Conducting an experiment on a smaller population limits the amount of data that can be collected and analyzed. By increasing the number of participants in a study, researchers can interpret a greater sample of data that will support their hypothesis, provide more accurate results, and answer any further research questions.

   Conduct the Experiment Over a Longer Period of Time: In order to obtain the most accurate results, it is crucial to conduct an experiment over a longer period time. It can be difficult to conclude how an variable is affected if it was not given enough time to produce a change. Without having enough time to collect accurate data that will produce accurate results, the experiment can be useless.

Set a Control: Controlling one or more variable within an experiment will produce more accurate results. If all participants follow the same criteria, there will be less room for the manipulation of the results due to outside variables. Something as simple as setting a specific time to collect data or creating a universal scale for participants to use will allow for a less open-ended interpretation of what is required of the participants and produce more reliable data.