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About Our Research
Our Studies and Data
The Global Flourishing Study is a longitudinal research study being carried out in collaboration between scholars at the Human Flourishing Program at Harvard and Baylor’s Institute for Studies of Religion, and in partnership with Gallup and the Center for Open Science. The study will involve data collection for approximately 240,000 participants, from 22 geographically and culturally diverse countries, with nationally representative samples within each country, and with annual data collection on the same panel of individuals, with a rich set of survey items, for five waves of data. The panel will include individuals from Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Egypt, Germany, India, Indonesia, Israel, Japan, Kenya, Mexico, Nigeria, the Philippines, Poland, Russia, Turkey, South Africa, Spain, Tanzania, Ukraine, the United Kingdom, and the United States, and will include a rich set of questions on well-being along with demographic, social, economic, political, religious, personality, childhood, community, health and character-based questions. The Global Flourishing Study will be an open-access data resource and the first wave of data collected in 2023. A full report on the survey development process from Gallup is available and the final set of questions that will be used in the Global Flourishing Study can be found in Appendix 2 of that report (p. 43-52). The study will have the potential to transform and dramatically expand our knowledge concerning human flourishing.
Our Methodology
In our empirical work on the determinants of well-being we try to employ, whenever possible, the most rigorous principles of causal inference including employing longitudinal designs, rich confounder adjusting, controlling for baseline outcome and prior levels of exposure. We have published papers on study design considerations and confounding control principles. We also routinely use sensitivity analysis to assess how robust or sensitive our conclusions are to potential unmeasured confounding factors so as to better assess the strength of evidence. Some of our also work employs more sophisticated causal models such as marginal structural models and causal mediation analysis models to examine the effects of time-varying exposures or mechanism. We have employed these approaches, for example, in our work on the effects of religious service attendance on mortality risk and depression and the potential mechanisms governing these relationships.
References:
VanderWeele, T.J. (2021). Can sophisticated study designs with regression analyses of observational data provide causal inferences? JAMA Psychiatry, 78:244-246.
VanderWeele, T.J. (2019). Principles of confounder selection. European Journal of Epidemiology, 34:211-219.
VanderWeele, T.J. and Ding, P. (2017). Sensitivity analysis in observational research: introducing the E-value. Annals of Internal Medicine, 167:268-274.
VanderWeele, T.J., Jackson, J.W., and Li, S. (2016). Causal inference and longitudinal data: a case study of religion and mental health. Social Psychiatry and Psychiatric Epidemiology, 51:1457-1466.
VanderWeele, T.J. (2015). Explanation in Causal Inference: Methods for Mediation and Interaction. New York: Oxford University Press.
Research Grants
(Consortium of Funders)
The Global Flourishing Study is a longitudinal research study being carried out in collaboration between scholars at the Human Flourishing Program at Harvard and Baylor’s Institute for Studies of Religion, and in partnership with Gallup and the Center for Open Science. The study will involve data collection for approximately 240,000 participants, from 22 geographically and culturally diverse countries, with nationally representative samples within each country, and with annual data collection on the same panel of individuals, with a rich set of survey items, for five waves of data. This $43.4 million initiative is being supported by a consortium of funders including the John Templeton Foundation, the Templeton Religion Trust, the Templeton World Charity Foundation, the Fetzer Institute, the Paul Foster Family Foundation, the Wellbeing for Planet Earth Foundation, the Well Being Trust, and the David & Carol Myers Foundation. The study will have the potential to transform and dramatically expand our knowledge concerning human flourishing.
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