Defining and Measuring Well-being and the Role of Happiness

Defining what a good society is, and consequently its observation and monitoring, should take into account two important and interrelated concepts: complexity and limiting. In order to measure and monitor a country’s well-being and progress, a systematic approach is needed, leading from “concept” to “measurement,” to “synthesis” and then “interpretation.” The process requires the identification of, in order: (a) the concepts (and their corresponding conceptual dimensions) to measure and monitor, and the ambits (or domains) in which the concepts have to be measured and monitored (b) the indicators, including the techniques aimed at summarizing and summing up the indicators (c) interpretative and explanatory models. This work aims at: (a) clarifying different issues concerning the wellbeing of societies by providing conceptual instruments allowing anyone to orient oneself among all the emerging proposals and to distinguish between serious and propagandistic issues; (b) unravelling some important methodological aspects and issues that should be considered in measuring it and constructing indicators.