The Most Satisfied US States
If all 16,551 people who have taken myPersonality’s Satisfaction With Life Scale were lined up from those most satisfied with their lives to those least satisfied, then the average person from the US’s most satisfied State, Vermont, would be in the 36th percentile, but the average person from the least satisfied State, Rhode Island, would be down in the 68th percentile. That’s a big difference considering that they are only about 80 miles apart.
Our data are shown in the graph below, displaying the aggregate Satisfaction With Life scores for all of the 50 US States and the District of Columbia. Also shown are error bars. Broadly, large error bars mean that we can be less certain of where the true score lies. For example, Wyoming has a large error bar because since it is the least populated state it is the one that we have the least amount of data for.
We compared the myPersonality rankings to those from the recent Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index, which also ranks US States, and found a favourable correlation between the two sets of rankings, suggesting that myPersonality’s analyses have validity when compared to this much more comprehensive poll.
Method & Results
In the graph, error bars are standard errors of the mean. The 16,551 people whose data were used in this analysis were those who had taken the satisfaction with life scale, had kindly allowed myPersonality access to their profile data, and had listed a US State in either their current location or home location. The Pearson correlation between myPersonality’s rankings and the Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index was .295, which was statistically significant at the .05 level. This index took into account other factors as well as Satisfaction With Life, so one should not expect an extremely high correlation.
What about the rest of the world ? Do you have similar data for other countries than the USA ? Thanks.
Hi Elsa, we have similar data for other countries than the USA, however since myPersonality is used predominantly by US citizens and there are more other countries in the world than states in the US, we’d be worried at the moment that there wouldn’t be enough data per country. In time though we’d expect to collect more data.
Hi, I just wondered if you have any interim indications for the UK? I appreciate that there might not be much data, as you said to Elsa.
Many thanks, Roseanna
Have you a mailing list that I may be-able to subscribe to?
Hi Ian, we don’t have a mailing list at the moment – but we do post to our Facebook application page with our latest news (including research blog posts, new tests, etc.) If you become a fan then it will add these updates to your Facebook newsfeed, see: http://www.facebook.com/apps/application.php?id=2490151219
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heiiii,as u told that u have the similar data for other contries, do u have data about india,its not clear there..thank u…….
@sumon
There aren’t _that_ many Indians using Facebook at the moment, so although we probably have enough data to look at the whole country’s satisfaction wtih life, we probably don’t have enough to do this kind of area by area analysis as we’ve done here for the USA.