What effect does the number of hours per week you spend on the job
have on your overall level of happiness? I'm mainly interested in
people working between 25 and 65 hours per week.
If you graphed happiness vs. hours worked, what would the graph look
like? Would it be a straight line, where every extra hour you work
makes you less happy by some fixed amount? Would it be a curve, where
people working 40 hours per week were happier than people working 25
or 65 hours? Would there be some kind of a threshold, where, say, so
long as you worked less than 50 hours per week, hours worked didn't
effect happiness, but, if you started working more than 50 hours per
week, your happiness would begin dropping? |
Clarification of Question by
gnu-ga
on
03 Jun 2004 08:47 PDT
Sublime has a good point. They mention two other variables that could
affect the answer: Whether or not you like your job, and whether or
not you're experiencing financial hardship.
I don't think the "do you enjoy your job" variable is going to bias
the answer one way or another, so I'm willing to assume that, with a
large enough sample size, it will average out, and the result we see
will represent a person who likes their job but doesn't love it.
The money variable is a much bigger deal. I want money to be
controlled for/ held constant! I do not want to be told that people
who work twice as many hours are happier because they earn more money.
In case you're unfamiliar with the statistical concept of "controlling
for" a variable, I'll give you a simplified example. To "control for"
income, you might restate my question as three seperate questions:
-For people earning $60,000/year, how does the happiness of someone
working 25 hours per week compare with someone working 45 hours per
week or someone working 65 hours per week?
-For people earning $120,000/year, how does the happiness of someone
working 25 hours per week compare with someone working 45 hours per
week or someone working 65 hours per week?
-For people earning $240,000/year, how does the happiness of someone
working 25 hours per week compare with someone working 45 hours per
week or someone working 65 hours per week?
Note that the fact that people who work 65 hours per week are more
likely to earn a higher income does not affect the answer to my
question.
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