Happiness, according to Aristotle, is the most desirable of all things. In the past few decades, many researchers have been studying predictors of happiness in an attempt to understand the construct. Mehl et al. (2010) conducted a naturalistic observation on the topic of happiness using electronically activated recorders (devises that unobtrusively record snippets of sound at regular intervals.
After reading the article, consider the following:
1. What was measured?
How did the researchers operationally define small talk, substantive talk, well-being, and happiness? How would you have operationally defined these terms?
In what ways might the participants have been reactive to this data collection method? Can you think of an alternate method of collecting similar data?
How reliable were the coders? How did the authors assess their reliability?
2. Can we know that one thing caused another? Does this study suffer from the problem involving the direction of causation? How so?
3. To what or to whom can we generalize the results? Does it generalize across cultures, age groups, or other demographics? Why or why not?
4. Do the results of this study line up with other studies on this topic?
5. Is the basic approach in this study qualitative or quantitative?
6. Given the topic of this study, what other ways can you think of to conduct this study using an observation method?
7. Is this study an example of concealed or unconcealed observation? Explain.
8. What are the ethical issues present in this study?
Write up your responses to these question in an essay format using APA 7th edition style to all aspects of the essay (i.e., a title page, a reference page, APA formatting of the page, and the use of appropriate in-text citations
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