This is a good article about how municipalities are using well-being indexes to measure intangibles such as levels of happiness among citizens. That alone makes this article useful to markets (to compare to their shoppers happiness levels or to find metrics that markets could also use perhaps?) but also interesting is that the article details how responses were collected. Ensuring that the proper methodology and sample size is crucial to anyone collecting qualitative data.
Food system organizers in these cities could learn from the conclusions and even work with these municipal leaders to also survey farmers market shoppers, possibly adding a question or two about their use of local foods and markets. Additionally, knowing about these data collection projects could also allow markets to easily locate experienced survey teams and tested methodology for their own survey work.
“Despite this caveat, Hadley stresses that the undertaking is eminently worthwhile, given the relative ease of conducting the surveys. “It’s not as hard as it seems to do a good, simple survey of your residents,” he says. “We did it all in-house and we did it all for under $4,000. It’s totally doable.” And the more cities that begin to do the surveys, the better, because they can compare results and learn from each other. For example, Somerville’s average rate of satisfaction was 7.5, but this number is hard to interpret without the context of responses from other cities.”
How Can a City Measure Its Happiness?
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