My
group and I focused on the very broad topic of happiness
for our project this semester. Our research focused on discovering why some
countries are considered happier than others. We considered the three major
happiness polls (the Prosperity Poll,
Gallup
Poll, and the UN
Happiness Poll) to choose our main countries. Ultimately, we chose the
nations of Bhutan, Denmark,
and Mexico
for our research because they were some of the happiest countries in the world,
but seemed so different from each other. Our research covered the positive
effects that government, weather, environment, religion, homogeneity [racial
and religious homogeneity creates less conflict because people can relate to
each other,] and positivism could have on national happiness; this is not only
proven in the Gallup and UN Happiness Poll, it is also proven in our sample
countries.
Bhutanese Children Playing |
Working
as a group helped us have varied resources, research, and perspectives. Having
five people work together to come up with sources helped us create valid
well-backed up research to prove that a nation’s happiness is based on
government, weather, environment, religion, homogeneity, and positivism, and
not just on material wealth or a nation’s GDP. We found most of our research separately on news websites such as The
New York Times, The Guardian, NPR, and PBS, the official websites of the countries we featured, and the websites from the
organizations conducting the polls, and showed our individual research to one
another. Working as a group not only
helped us gather a lot of research, it also helped us gather different
perspectives about what exactly creates happiness. We were able to edit each
other’s work and see what really worked to prove our point in a respectful way,
which helped keep our posts cohesive and organized. We worked on all of the
posts together, which worked well for us as a team.
![]() |
Happy Danish People at a Soccer Game |
I learned so much from working
on the happiness project throughout the semester. I really enjoyed working with
the people in my group, which was a pleasant surprise, because I usually dislike
group projects. We worked really well as a team and all collaborated in our own
ways. I learned that the more people involved the more research you find, and there
will be more perspectives that the research will cover. While doing our
research we found both the negative and positive aspects of seemingly perfect and
happy countries. For example Denmark, the fourth happiest country according to
the 2014 Prosperity Poll,
also has the one of the highest
suicide rates in the world; however they also have a great affordable
healthcare system which allows them to seek help for depression regardless of
economic standing, and ultimately achieve happiness in their lives. I also,
most importantly, learned that while the countries seemed so different at first,
they actually have the same ways of measuring and happiness. All of the
countries essentially defined happiness as feeling satisfied and safe with
their lives and government and cited religion and their families as things they
turn to for happiness.
A cheerful Cinco de Mayo celebration in Mexico |
No comments:
Post a Comment