The Future of Well-Being Science
Richard G. Cowden & Tyler J. VanderWeele
In his 1985 editorial, The Role of a New Machine, Bruce B. Dan reflected on how the rising uptake of computer-based word processors (e.g., Microsoft Word) among authors was transforming the peer-reviewed publication process in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA). At a time when authors were still submitting physical copies of their manuscripts to the journal, he imagined a future with “computer links between authors and journal offices” that would allow authors to submit manuscripts directly from their computers. Several decades later, what he described as a future possibility has become standard practice.
For many of today’s researchers, it might be difficult to imagine working in the typewriter era before computer-enabled word processing became increasingly widespread in the 1980s. The resulting efficiencies, such as being able to correct a typographical error or rework an entire section without having to begin typing afresh, rarely enter conscious awareness these days.
Nevertheless, this technological development transformed scholarly writing and the wider research workflow, making it challenging to compare the nature, scope, and volume of research work feasible before and after the use of word processors became the norm. Such comparisons risk assuming a static baseline, where the technological constraints of the past are imposed as seemingly timeless standards for how research should unfold and what researchers can reasonably accomplish.
When the research process is augmented by technological developments, the impact is usually not limited to completing tasks more efficiently. New tools often expand the frontier of feasible scientific work, making it possible to pursue more rigorous, complex, and ambitious research questions that may not have been reasonably possible in the past. As technologies continue to evolve in novel ways, even today’s expectations about the process and outcomes of research may prove just as temporary as those commonly held during the typewriter era.
Recent coordinated research work using Wave 1 data from the Global Flourishing Study offers one illustration of the efficiencies that are possible when a powerful research resource comes into alignment with the technological and organizational capacities available. It is a convergence of factors that helped create the conditions for a coordinated set of connected publications using the first wave of GFS data.
With its harmonized cross-country survey architecture covering numerous measures of well-being, the Global Flourishing Study is well suited to applying a reusable analytic pipeline that can be adapted to many distinct research questions. Careful advance planning, structured partly by the Center for Open Science’s preregistration requirements for accessing initial data releases through the publicly accessible Global Flourishing Study registry, provided a transparent framework for documenting individual research project plans and connecting them to the broader coordinated approach.
Anyone can search the non-embargoed preregistrations in the registry to familiarize themselves with the scope and plans for the research projects that have been preregistered. This provides readers with an opportunity to compare research questions and analytic decisions across projects, giving visibility to aspects of projects that are both distinct and held in common.
Relatively recent advances in capabilities for virtual communication and sharing of code have made it easier to coordinate among a team of researchers able to exchange materials, divide responsibilities, and work in parallel across many distinct constructs and countries. One team may focus on the topic of suffering, another on forgiveness, another on hope, and so on, each contributing to a broader understanding of flourishing within and across countries included in the Global Flourishing Study. While numerous aspects of the methodology may be common in accordance with preregistered plans, each publication addresses a distinct substantive research question. Many of the peer-reviewed publications arising from this coordinated effort are featured in a Global Flourishing Study special collection organized by the Springer-Nature group.
The coordinated research framework applied to the first wave of Global Flourishing Study data illustrates how a shared vision and collective effort can support rapid advances in scientific knowledge about human flourishing. It is not merely a case of yesterday’s scientific approaches conducted at a faster pace. It is an innovative form of coordinated inquiry that would have been extremely difficult to organize and sustain in the past. This work shows that the future of well-being science need not be constrained by past models.
As findings from the Global Flourishing Study continue to emerge, we might begin to ask: how will the capabilities of tomorrow’s technologies further expand the scale, coordination, and impact of well-being science to strengthen human flourishing?
