Happiness Sociological research has many applications. Large-scale, representative surveys can tell us a lot about our population, about social trends, and about attitudes, behaviors, and beliefs....

Happiness

Sociological research has many applications. Large-scale, representative surveys can tell us a lot about our population, about social trends, and about attitudes, behaviors, and beliefs. They also give us results that we can generalize to the larger population. For example, researchers might want to know how happy a population is. One way to find that out is to directly ask a representative sample how happy they feel. Researchers can then generalize their findings to the larger population. For example, national survey data tell us that, in general, Americans say they are happy. So where do you fit in that survey?