GNH survey 2010 The GNH Index is based on a survey of 7,142 people that was completed in all 20 districts of Bhutan in the year 2010 and is representative by rural and urban area and by districts or dzongkhags. The survey itself was developed by the Centre for Bhutan Studies (CBS) and builds on previous surveys on GNH. The survey covers all nine domains and gives innovative insights into happiness that are not found in most other national surveys. Indeed in fielding the GNH surveys, the CBS argues that the quality of the data is unusually high and this is because the enumerators working often in remote rural areas took time with the participants to explain the purpose of the index, to share the importance of understanding their own insight and perspectives and so enabled the respondents to answer fully, completely and reflectively the questions on the survey. The survey builds on a 2006 pre-pilot questionnaire and also on the 2008 GNH survey, which was representative nationally but not by district. It repeated some of those questions, and learning from those experiences and the analysis of that survey, also improved them. In order to measure the nine domains of GNH, 33 indicators have been selected according to five different criteria. First of all the indicators have to reflect the normative values of GNH, which have been articulated in official documents such as the National Development Plan and in statements by His Majesty the King, the Prime Minister and other ministers. They also reflect the normative values that are embedded in the culture and traditions of Bhutan. The second criterion for the indicators relates to their statistical properties; each indicator was analyzed extensively to ensure robustness. Third, the indicators were chosen such that they would accurately reflect how happiness is increasing or evolving in different regions over time and among different groups accurately. Fourth, the indicators had to be relevant for public action – although government policy is by no means the only way of increasing GNH. Many domains of GNH can be facilitated by appropriate government policies and by government policies that create incentives for businesses, NGOs and citizens to support GNH in its many dimensions. And lastly, the indicators have to be understandable as far as possible by ordinary citizens. They have to reflect and relate to people’s own experiences in their own lives, so that the GNH Index would not only be a policy tool but would also be something that people could use to imagine the many different ways of being happy in the Bhutanese context. There are four indicators in every domain, except time use, which has two (sleep and work), and living standards, which has three. Because the object of inquiry is happiness people will think the key questions are “How happy am I? How can I be happier?” but actually these hedonic questions are not present in the index although they were present in the survey and have been analyzed. The following section presents the indicators that have been included in the index.
domains and indicators This section explains each of the nine domains and 33 indicators of the 2010 GNH Index 2010, how they have been constructed as well as the cutoffs that have been set. The GNH Index uses two kinds of thresholds: sufficiency thresholds, and one happiness threshold. Sufficiency thresholds show how much a person needs in order to enjoy sufficiency in each of the 33 indicators. The overall happiness threshold meanwhile answers the question “how many domains or in what percentage of the indicators must a person achieve sufficiency in order to be understood as happy?” The happiness threshold will be presented later in this paper. 114