Measuring Happiness as an Indicator of Public Administration Effectiveness

Concept Paper: Data Collection and Interpretation --The Effectiveness of Public Administration in Their Activities Dedicated to the Evaluation of the Life Quality and Standards in Separate States

Today, public administrators in the world’s 200 or so states are confronted with a wide array of novel challenges and opportunities which directly affect the quality of life of their citizenry. It is reasonable to suggest, however, that the respective effectiveness of public administration in these states exists along a continuum, ranging from an essentially failed state which provides no services to states where citizens enjoy the full range of services that contribute to a higher quality of life. The purpose of this paper is to provide an explanation concerning the data on which the research for the proposed study will be based, including issues related to the method, manner, and feasibility of data collection; the population(s), data set(s) or other location(s) from which the data will be collected; and the coding of data and/or definitions of key terms.

Research Method and Manner

The proposed study will use a mixed research method consisting of qualitative and quantitative data. The qualitative data for the study will be obtained through a series of semi-structured interviews, case studies of public administration practices in individual states and content analysis of texts, documents, media and other forms of communication that reflect public administration’s policies concerning the welfare of citizens. The qualitative semi-structured interviews for the study will involve in-depth conversations with participants to gather detailed insights into their experiences, opinions, and perceptions. These types of interviews are particularly useful for exploring complex and nuanced topics. Likewise, case studies involve in-depth analysis of a single or a few instances to gain a deep understanding of a phenomenon. They are often used to explore unique or complex situations in real-life contexts.

The quantitative data for the study will be archived reports from government and nongovernmental organizations concerning the relative effectiveness of public administration as measured by citizens’ level of happiness in a troubled world. The feasibility of this research method and manner is discussed further below.

Feasibility of Data Collection

The data collection process for the proposed study is deemed feasible since it relies on archived governmental and nongovernmental organizational data as well as first-hand, empirical observations from public administrators in different states. The data collection process will encompass both semi-structured interviews and rigorous content analysis of existing documents, academic literature, and governmental reports. By engaging with public administrators directly, the proposed study seeks to gain a nuanced understanding of the contextual factors influencing the effectiveness of public administration. In addition, content analysis of relevant documents will provide a historical and comparative lens that will further enhance the depth and scope of the research.

Populations of Interest

In order to gain as much relevant qualitative information as possible, public administrators at all levels from different states will be recruited for the qualitative semi-structured interviews needed for the study. Although a convenience sampling method will be used for this purpose, special emphasis will be placed on recruiting public administrators from the highest- and lowest-rated happiness index states including Finland, Denmark, Iceland, Israel and the Netherlands for the highest and Afghanistan, Sierra Leone and Armenia for the lowest, among others.

Data Sets and Coding

Data coding will involve a systematic process that uses qualitative analytical software such as NVivo for interview transcripts and statistical software such as Excel for quantitative data analyses (Perri, 2020). The data coding process will identify themes and patterns from the qualitative, semi-structured interviews using an iterative coding process that builds on previously identified themes and patterns. Likewise, the quantitative data collected for the proposed study will be subjected to statistical analyses to identify correlations between happiness and factors such as national GDP (Swygart-Hobaugh, 2019) as well as trends among other variables that reflect the degree of happiness of a state’s citizenry (Ulkhaq, 2020).

Definition of Key Terms

Effectiveness of public administration: Although multiple metrics exist that can measure this construct (Borisov, 2022), it will be generally defined as the extent to which a state’s citizens regard themselves as happy according to the state’s ratings on the World Happiness Report for the purposes of the study proposed herein.

Happiness: This term refers to a state’s ranking as measured by the World Happiness Report (World Happiness Report, 2023).

State: In the context of the proposed study, a state will be defined as “an independent, sovereign government exercising control over a certain spatially defined and bounded area, whose borders are usually clearly defined and internationally recognized by other states” (Geography of International Affairs, 2023, para. 3).