Happiness Survey

Every two years, the City runs the Somerville Happiness Survey to better understand our community’s happiness and satisfaction with City services. The Happiness Survey covers a range of topics, from neighborhood street design to education opportunities, gathering valuable insight into residents’ needs and preferences. The survey is distributed in the City’s most common languages: English, Spanish, Portuguese, Haitian Creole, Nepali, Traditional Chinese, and Simplified Chinese.    

SomerStat has conducted the Happiness Survey since 2011. Inspired by efforts in the United Kingdom and Bhutan, Somerville was the first municipality in the United States to survey its residents on happiness and wellbeing.

The Happiness Survey helps decision-makers create effective policies and allocate resources. The 2011 survey, for example, pointed to improving the city’s tree canopy to support residents’ wellbeing, while the 2023 survey told us that new civic engagement opportunities like Participatory Budgeting need more widespread communication. Hearing directly from residents also adds nuance to our existing measures; while most Somerville residents live near a grocery store, differences in grocery store preferences mean that even the closest residents may be unsatisfied with their access.

Because the Happiness Survey is repeated every two years, we’re able to track sentiment over time and see the effects of real-world changes. For example, the absence of street fairs and festivals during the pandemic showed us how important these community events are to residents’ satisfaction and feelings of belonging in Somerville. We also ask demographic questions such as age, race, gender, and income to ensure a representative sample and examine how opinions differ between identity groups.

We select participants for the Happiness Survey randomly, so we can hear the perspectives of our entire community. This allows us to hear from everyone, including people who can’t or don’t ordinarily provide feedback through other means, such as attending City Council meetings or directly contacting 311. It’s especially useful to hear from people who experience barriers to providing feedback, such as non-English speakers, busy parents, and new residents.