The worst question

The questionnaire we are supposed to administer to our clients has about 115 questions. Depending on the client’s response, we end up asking 80-90 of them. The worst/silliest question, however, is the following: “All things considered, how satisfied are you with your life now? On a scale of one to ten, where one is very unsatisfied and ten is very satisfied.” I imagine this has something to do with FINCA’s desire to participate in happiness research, (http://www1.eur.nl/fsw/happiness/) (no I haven't figured out how to make links on blogger yet) but it just doesn't work in Nicaragua (in case anyone out there still thought happiness could be reliably measured!) For one thing, the concept of a 1-10 scale is completely foreign to ALL the clients, even those with secondary education. We will all spend several minutes painstakingly explaining the idea: "So, one is really, really, miserable, two is a little bit happier, five is in the middle, eight is pretty happy, ten is everything is perfect..." and they will listen patiently and then say, "Si," or "Satisfecho." The bizarre gringo idea of categorizing one's life satisfaction on a 1-10 scale is literally impossible to convey, although sometimes the heavily Christian ones will say something like, "Well, I'm a Christian, and with God everything is good, and I cannot complain, so 10."

Not only is the question silly, it's also an unpredictable heartbreaker. It follows immediately after the question about food insecurity. Having someone who's just told you that she and her family often go without food respond "10, because I have God," can be infuriating. On the other hand, Lauren had a client who said "everything is fine" to the food security question, but then burst into tears and said "1" to the life satisfaction question - she was 17, with three kids, daddy nowhere to be found, and had had to drop out of school - and of course, she and her kids went hungry much more than she had admitted in the first question. Jeannette had a client who said "10" because her situation had been miserable before, and now her pulperia (little corner store) was doing well, her husband who had left her for another woman had returned (so that he could die in comfort, but let's not split hairs) and she had even been able to take a vacation, something she'd never dreamed she could do.

Field realities ~= arcane social science concepts. Happinesss ~= possible to measure.