The Pursuit Of Happiness

What can be discovered about the pursuit of happiness by conducting empirical research? “Happiness is the purpose of life.” – Dalai Lama

As seniors at Barringer High School, we have been reading about the pursuit of happiness. The readings led us to understand how important and vital happiness is to humans. Based on some of the ideas presented we decided to conduct a survey among one hundred Barringer students to find out how they rate their happiness. To carry out this survey, we employed a questionnaire with the following questions. We are also providing a reason for these questions.

1. From 1 to 5 (5 being the highest) how would you rate your happiness? 1) 2) 3) 4) 5)
It is important for people to rate their happiness because by doing so we will have a general consensus of people happiness.

2. Does your environment influence your happiness? Strongly Agree Agree Disagree Strongly Disagree
This question relate back to the article in which we been reading on happiness. On how culture and your environment effects your happiness.

3. Does your family background affect your happiness?

Strongly Agree Agree disagree Strongly Disagree

It is important for us to know if family background affects happiness because in the reading in Pursuit Of Happiness many people happiness were affected by their family background.

4. Do you feel you have made a difference of any sort in society?
Nothing Very little Somewhat A Lot

We chose this question because making a difference in society brings many people happiness. We wanted to see how many people feel they have made a difference in society.

5. Have your friends or the people you associate with influence your happiness?
Agree Disagree

We chose this question because friends are an important part of life. We wanted to see how much friends effects someone happiness.

6. Do you Agree/Disagee that you need love in order to be happy?
Agree Disagree

This question is important because the reading Pursuit Of Happiness talks about how love is an important part of happiness. We wanted to prove how true that is.

7. From 1 to 5 (5 being the highest) how much does money effect your happiness?
1) 2) 3) 4) 5)

We chose this question because money is an important part of life. We wanted to see how much money affects someone’s happiness.

8. From 1 to 5 (5 being the highest) how much do you influence other people happiness?
1) 2) 3) 4) 5)

According to the reading in Pursuit Of Happiness many people influence other people happiness. We wanted to see how true that is.

9) What makes you happy?

A)

We chose this question to get a general idea of what make students at Barringer High School happy.

By counting the results of this study, we hope to shed light on the manner in which BHS student persuit happiness and the possibility of achieving it.

On the question, from 1 to 5 (5 being the highest) how would you rate your happiness? 42 percent of the Barringer students surveyed chose number 3, 46 percent chose number 4 and the rest chose number 1 or number 2. On the question, does your environment influence your happiness? 73 percent chose strongly agree or agree and the rest chose strongly disagree or agree. On the question, does your family background affect your happiness? 57 percent of the students surveyed agreed that family background effects happiness and 30 percent disagree. On the question, do you feel you have made a difference of any sort in society? 65 percent of the students chose somewhat, 29 percent chose very little and the rest chose nothing. On the question, have your friends or people you associate with influence your happiness? 81 percent of the students agreed that their friends influence their happiness and 19 percent disagreed. On the question, do you Agree/Disagee that you need love in order to be happy? 92 percent of Barringer students agreed that love is an important part of happiness and 8% disagreed.

On the question, from 1 to 5 (5 being the highest) how much does money effect your happiness? 42 percent of the students chose number 3, 46 percent chose number 4 and the rest chose number 1 or 2. On the question, from 1 to 5 (5 being the highest) how much do you influence other people happiness? 58 percent chose number 4, 36 percent chose number 3 and the rest chose number 1 or 2. On the question what makes you happy? 66 percent of students surveyed at Barringer said family and 24 percent said money. From the results of this survey I can conclude that 70 percent of Barringer students are happy with their lives and over 50% agrees that their environment, family background, and friends affect their happiness. Over 60 percent feel they have made some difference in society. What make Barringer High School students happy are money, family love and friends.