Selecting Appropriate Happiness Measures and Malleability: A Review

Happiness is everyone’s ultimate goal for having a meaningful and better life. To some, it means not something that easy to achieve but need a persistence effort to improve one’s life. However, very little empirical paper can be claim to be the most appropriate happiness measures. This study specifically attempts to 1) perform systematic review of identifying the concept of happiness in broader perspectives, 2) investigating the adequate information regarding the most frequently used happiness measures based on past studies and 3) make some conclusion based on findings. Computer search using systematic review procedures was grounded based on literature search namely a few search engines: Google Scholar, EBSCOHOST, open access academic journals by using predefined keywords in databases. The findings revealed a total of 15 potential instruments are used for measuring happiness and subjective wellbeing. These instruments consist of two perspectives which comprised of multi item and single item scale. This review found that lack of evidence should not be interpreted as implying lack of practice used. In conclusion, this study is also adequately as powered studies targeted as to proof the appropriate happiness measures using composite or single item scale for measuring happiness.