How do you measure joy?

Justin Pasquariello
4 min readMay 11, 2023

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“How do you measure joy?” When we talk about our work to significantly increase joy in community, people often ask this.

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Our goal has always been to significantly, measurably increase joy in community.

When I shared the community joy work with Congressman Joe Kennedy, he offered to assist in a variety of ways. He also emphasized a focus on a particular part of the plan: starting with a community survey.

This was sound advice. We want to establish the baseline before we have done much community joy work, so we can measure again later and see the change that happens in our community, and in subgroups of people in the community, from our work.

When people ask “how do you measure that?”, many assume happiness and joy are too ephemeral to measure or haven’t been measured too much. Fortunately, that isn’t true. There are great validated, reliable measures that have been deployed in a variety of places.

In her first year as Director of Community Joy, Dr. Krina Patel focused on understanding the research base supporting the community joy movement; strengthening our definition and description; and building joy among the Social Centers staff.[1]

As we planned for Krina’s second year of work, we identified the critical need for this survey and measurement — but weren’t sure how we would finalize our questions, deploy the survey to get a representative sample from East Boston, or pay for it.

Fortunately, we were in conversation about this work with our friends at the Shah Family Foundation. We had a great lunch meeting at Angela’s[2] — with delicious Pueblan (Mexican) food). We talked about this need for measurement.

For several years, the Shah Family Foundation has been leading work to address the child and adolescent mental health crisis. They have supported evidence-based mindfulness work and the infusion of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy approaches into work with schools. They, like East Boston Social Centers, are seeking to determine how to most effectively address the mental health crisis children (and people in general) are facing. They are excited to demonstrate what is possible — and to develop models that can be replicated.

The Shah Foundation expanded the vision for the community joy survey. They suggested conducting a citywide survey on joy in Boston, with oversampling in East Boston, to determine the current state of affairs and provide a baseline. They have a long-standing relationship with Massachusetts’ leading polling firm, MassINC — and reached out to them to collaborate on finalizing the questions and deploying the survey. Shah Family Foundation also is funding this survey work.

We have worked closely with the Shah Foundation and Mass Inc. over the past two months, translating our definition of joy and our five pillars into a survey instrument. We each gathered potential questions and shared them; Marisa from Shah Family Foundation led initial work to align and streamline the survey.

In the end, much of our survey draws from the PERMA-H Wellbeing Survey; we drew questions on contemplation and demographics from other sources. We have measures of happiness[3] like the Cantril Ladder (which is used in the World Happiness Report) that will help us compare current joy levels in Boston neighborhoods in an international context.

We also will have some ability to look at differences in joy — and our five pillars — between various groups of people. This surveying, collectively, not only will provide a baseline, but also will help us to prioritize among strategies to increase community joy. For example, if we were to identify that new parents are experiencing lower levels of joy, or that those who are lonely are experiencing the lowest levels of joy, or that those struggling with addiction are struggling most, we would be able to tailor approaches to produce the most significant joy boost for a segment of our community — and thereby, increase joy for the community as a whole.

The survey is currently being administered. So if you receive a call from Mass, Inc., please answer. In the coming months, we look forward to telling you what the survey says . . .

. . . and to using that data to build a more Joyful Eastie.

[1] Our staff survey also asks questions related to joy.

[2] A restaurant I highly recommend to my non-Eastie readers here (and to any Eastie readers who haven’t yet discovered it)

[3] Some of our survey questions come from “happiness” surveys — but actually measure joy as we have defined it: sustained emotional wellbeing or happiness over time.

This is the fourteenth of a series of posts about significantly increasing joy the only way we can: in community. Whether you’re seeking the best ways to increase your joy; making your community the next Finland; seeking to save democracy; or just a friend reading along, this column is for you. Please share and subscribe. To join our movement, please send me an email or support East Boston Social Centers: https://www.ebsocialcenters.org/support

Our Social Centers staff — featured here at our annual Joy:us gala, have taken a staff survey on joy that has led to improvements. We are excited to survey our community next!

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Justin Pasquariello
Justin Pasquariello

Written by Justin Pasquariello

Justin is Executive Director at East Boston Social Centers, where we are leading an evidence-based movement to significantly increase community joy.

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