In the most recent census made by Somerville, Massachusetts a new question was asked to its residents “In a scale of 10 how happy do you feel right now?” One of the reasons of why this state is doing this is because they want to get out of the traditional concepts (they want to know about people’s well-being instead of just their material and economic issues). even though many politicians were debating about how to promote their polices by asking about the people’s feelings it didn’t created a big difference to the people because they were answering to the question without any fear and been honest like this man who answered that he could give himself a 6 explaining, “I would like to be three inches taller and speak Quechua fluently.”
As the New York times said, this new question that the census has created for the state is giving more positive opinions to the people because they could have the opportunity to feel protected in some way but also they would know that the government is worried about them and worried about creating a better place for them to live, somewhere where they could feel secure and comfortable. in my personal opinion I think that creating this question that goes directly to the citizens feelings is a good idea because at some point i think that happiness also depends on the place and area where you are and the people surrounded by them. For example, if you live in an area where there’s a lot of crime and danger I am sure you will feel worried or disappointed instead of happy, so that’s why the politicians wants to know how you are feeling so that the could do everything in order to make you feel comfortable and happy.
Revision for Th 9/12
Recently in Somerville Massachusstes a new question was added to the census with the goal to know how happy people are, the question was, “on a scale of 1 to 10, how happy do you feel right now? According to the article, more than 7500 people have mailed the survey, which shows that people are taking seriously about this new question. This new idea that Sommerville officials have with this question might serve as a perfect test tube for such an experiment because as the time is passing this town have gentrified and renewed in every possible way. Since this question was created Sr. Daniel Gilbert, a Harvard psychology professor have been donating his time by making phone calls to residents and asking them this type of question in order to help the government to using a randomized sample of Sommerville’s 76000 residents. Officials in the area hope to see their residents answering the questions because by that they could try to find a solution to make the place a better place to live and make the residents feel comfortable.
Reflection:
The reason of why I decided to revise my summary is because when when I wrote it the fist time I gave my personal opinion and what I think of creating this question for the residents. Also I revised it because on Tuesday I learned different techniques to make it look better for example not making it too long or too short depending on the article, I changed the information on it because I realized I had a lot of not important information and the information that needed to be there wasn’t on my summary.
