+ What is included in the Exploring Happiness Index platform?

• Dashboard: This page allows you to submit scores from 1-10 for each of the variables that make up your index. We suggest you update your scores every 1-2 weeks.
• Mood tracker: This page has a simple mood tracker, for those interested in a more high frequency insight into their wellbeing. You can update your scores here once a day if you would like to and you can also add any daily reflections using our calendar notes function.
• Dreamy visuals: If you're tracking anything then its helpful to see a visualisation of how things have been going, and to break it down from various angles. This page has that covered.
• Reflections: Our notes page is a free space. It's there to allow you to spend some time thinking about your scores, how to improve them or for setting yourself some goals. These are just our suggestions though, you can use it for your shopping lists if you like!

+ What are the main benefits from using this index?

• Being informed: Most of us would find it hard to say with any great level of precision how happy we felt six months ago, let alone be able to break that down into what was driving how we were feeling. This index gives you that information, which could prove to be very useful when making important decisions, such as whether to change jobs or make a big commitment.
• The ultimate tracker: Nowadays, it is not uncommon to track several parts of our lives, from steps to sleep to calories. But whats the point in tracking these things? For most people, it's because they believe if they do more steps or sleep better, they will end up feeling better. This index allows you to check whether thats true in practice.
• A tool to support mental health: Using this index allows you time to reflect, to think about what has been going well and what has been more challenging. We encourage using our notes page to make strategies to improve scores. This should help to build resilience and support your mental health.

+ How is the Exploring Happiness Index calculated?

At its simplest level, the index made up of a number of variables that are known to influence happiness and wellbeing. Each variable has a weight attached to it and you are required to report scores of 1-10 for each of the variables. Once you have submitted all of your scores, you will receive a final overall score out of 100.

• Choices: When you create an account with us you make a few choices that allow us to personalise the account to you. First, you'll chose from a list of thirteen different individual types (e.g. Student, employed-worker or retired). And then you choose how important each of the individual componenents that make up your index are to you and the weight we apply to that will change.
• Components: There are typically six or seven main components that make up each person's index (depending on your choices). These components are things like your health or your financial situation. Before you have made your choices about which components are most important to you the components are not equally weighted. We have chosen weights for each of the variables using the academic research available on what are the main determinants of happiness and how important each of these are to us, on average. Your choices therefore adjust the weights to be more applicable to you from this starting point.
• Sub-components We then have sub-components within each of the main components of the index. For example, we split the health component into physical and mental health sub-components. There are between 15 and 18 sub-components in each index, depending on your intitial choices.
• Scores: Finally, you are required to report score of 1-10 for each sub-component in the index. There are question prompts on our dashboard page to help direct your answers and we also have a user guide page which gives more information about all of the components and sub-components in our index. Once you have decided and submitted all of your scores you will recieve a personalised score (i.e. calculated using the weights reflecting your choices) and also a default score (i.e. calculated using the weights befote you made any choices).

For those that would like to learn a bit more about the index but keep it non-technical, take a look at our user guide.

For those that want to understand how we calibrated our index and the calculations that we use, take a look at our index methodology paper.