Present life versus the best/worst times

In the annual World Happiness Reports (WHR), the system for measuring happiness in a country involves conducting a survey that asks each respondent to assess his/her present life on a scale from 0 to 10, where 0 is the worst possible life, and 10 is the best possible life, that he/she can imagine.

This is called the Cantril ladder scale, first developed in the 1960s by the American psychologist Hadley Cantril. The scale is self-anchored, because it is the survey respondent who defines the meaning of its end-points or anchors, based on what he/she imagines as the best possible and worst possible situations to be in.

The 2018 WHR puts the average Philippine Cantril score for 2015-17 at 5.52, which ranks 71st out of 156 countries, in terms of status.  The Philippines is above median country Serbia (at 5.40), but is not “the happiest country in the world.”

In terms of progress over time, however, the Philippines ranks 14th out of 141 countries, because its Cantril score rose by +0.72 points compared to 2008-10 (see “Track happiness over time, not space,” Opinion, 3/24/18).

Acsa: a scale anchored on one’s personal-best and personal-worst times. Acsa is a newer rating scale for subjective wellbeing that is self-anchored on the survey-respondent’s recall of the best time and the worst time in life that he/she ever experienced in fact.

The Acsa (meaning Anamnestic Comparative Self-Assessment) scale was originally developed in the 1980s by the Belgian oncologist Jan Bernheim. I had the pleasure of meeting him at the International Society for Quality of Life Studies conference last year.

Acsa is implemented with 11 points, from -5 (the personal-worst time) to +5 (the personal-best time), with 0 in the center. By his/her “best time” and “worst time,” the survey respondent is asked to recall a pertinent two-week period in the past, and then choose the point corresponding to the present time.

Though Acsa could be rescaled from 0 to 10, like the Cantril ladder, maintaining the five negative points makes it clear that these are more or less painful, whereas the five positive points are more or less pleasant, and zero means neutral.

A pioneering survey on Acsa. Social Weather Stations tried out Acsa in its December 2017 national survey of adults, which, as far as I know, was its first time to be used in the Philippines.  The same survey carried the two SWS standard items on happiness and satisfaction with life, making it possible to compare the three indicators.

Only 7.1 percent gave answers in the negative range of -1 to -5; I would take these as considering their present state in life as painful. There were 6.2 percent that answered 0. The balance of 87 percent all gave positive answers, with 24.8 percent answering +5, i.e., claiming that the present is the best time of their lives so far.  The Acsa national average was +2.8 (equivalent to 7.8 on the 0 to 10 scale).

Here is Acsa tabulated by Happiness: Very Happy, +3.4; Fairly Happy, +2.4; Not Very Happy, +0.7; and Not At All Happy, -2.5.

Here is Acsa tabulated by Satisfaction with Life: Very Satisfied, +3.3; Fairly Satisfied, +2.5; Not Very Satisfied, +0.64; and Not At All Satisfied, +0.57.

Acsa, like Happiness and Satisfaction with Life, is positively related to social class, level of education, and nonsuffering from poverty and hunger. Details of the Acsa tabulations will be in a forthcoming special SWS report.

Acsa is consistent with other SWS indicators of subjective wellbeing and quality of life as a whole.  Its special advantage is that its anchors are based, realistically, on the people’s personal histories, rather than on their imagined possibilities.

Contact mahar.mangahas@sws.org.ph.