Are Islanders happy? This masters student wants to know

A P.E.I. man has launched an online survey to gain a deeper understanding of the well-being of Islanders and the communities they live in.

Charlottetown's Connolly Aziz is a masters student at the University of East London studying remotely from the Island. He has created the P.E.I. Well-being Project although he knows what makes him happy about living on P.E.I.

"Closeness to nature, closeness to trail, to beaches. I think that plays an important aspect of our overall well-being," says Aziz.

His research could help inform organizations and policy makers on ways to improve the well-being of all Islanders, he said.

"The P.E.I. Well-Being Project is designed to measure subjective well-being of all Islanders," he said. "There is ways to measure different aspects of well-being. That's people's satisfaction with life. That's measuring the positive affect, or the positive emotions have and the negative effects, the negative emotions people have."

Aziz said for the study one of the measurements used in the survey is a quality of life scale from the World Health Organization.

"It measures people's physical health, it'll measure their psychological health, their social relationships and then their environment which they live in," he said.

Aziz said when the information is gathered he is going to look at those measurements to see if it does in-fact impact people's sense of well-being.

Happiness during a pandemic?

He realizes doing the survey in the middle of a global pandemic may impact the results.

"Part of me was wishing, I wish I had done this two years ago and got some data and then we could see the change after doing it again here," he said, "I think a lot of people are experiencing more negative emotions like anxiety and stress."

Aziz said he's starting to gather that data now to compare it to data collected later. He said that will be able to give an indication on the progress of well-being on P.E.I.

The anonymous online survey is open to any resident of P.E.I. 18 years or older and takes about 10 minutes to complete. To take part in the project, you can search for the P.E.I. Well-being Project online.

The survey is open until Nov. 30.

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