The BBC has a very simple test to determine how happy you are.
I took it and got the following assessment:
Satisfied
People who score in this range like their lives and feel that things are going well. Of course your life is not perfect, but you feel that things are mostly good. Furthermore, just because you are satisfied does not mean you are complacent. In fact, growth and challenge might be part of the reason you are satisfied. For most people in this high-scoring range, life is enjoyable, and the major domains of life are going well - work or school, family, friends, leisure, and personal development. You can draw motivation from those areas of your life that you are dissatisfied with.
Seems about right to me.
How do you rate?
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I suggest replacing their simple test with an even simpler one:
1. Are you happy?
Seriously, though, if we don't trust people's ability to answer this introspective question (thus necessitating a special "test"), then why would we trust answers to a similarly introspective questions about life satisfaction, etc.?
I guess I was half-hoping for some weird correlation like if you prefer color X over color Y you're happier...
The answer reads like a horoscope... I'm sure any of the responses, regardless of how I answered, would have "fit" my current perspective.
The literary style of the answers is a bit horoscope-like, admittedly. But that's just style. Given Ed Diener's profile, I imagine the questions must have been extracted from one of his standardised instruments.
Re why not just ask if people are happy: because 1-item questionnaires don't generally turn out to be reliable. Multiple-item ones do to varying, and testable, extents.
My answer (which, admittedly, I could actually have come up with from a 1-item questionnaire!):
Dissatisfied
People who score in this range are substantially dissatisfied with their lives. People in this range may have a number of areas that are not going well, or one or two areas that are going very badly. If life dissatisfaction is a response to a recent event such as bereavement, divorce, or a significant problem at work, you will probably return over time to his or her former level of higher satisfaction. However, if low levels of life satisfaction have been persisting for some time then some changes might be in order - both in attitudes and patterns of thinking, and probably in life activities as well. Low levels of life satisfaction in this range, if they persist, can indicate that things are going badly and life alterations are needed. Furthermore, a person with low life satisfaction in this range is sometimes not functioning well because their unhappiness serves as a distraction. Talking to a friend, a member of the clergy, a counsellor, or another specialist can often help to get moving in the right direction, although positive change will be up to you.
I got "Highly Satisfied", which appeared to have pretty much the same description as "Satisfied".
The BBC has a few more interesting psychological/cognitive tests. Two that I took were what sex is your brain? (male for me) and explore your memory.
I agree it's rubbish, for much the same reasons as Eric. Not that the 'result' was wrong, but it's so obvious where the questions lead that they're redundant.
There isn't really an introspective way to determine whether or not a questionnaire is 'rubbish'. That's why we test for reliability & validity. I, for one, certainly didn't give the exact same answer for every question, which would be the case if the questions are 'redundant'.