Followup: Are People Happier Living in Community?

Are people happier living in community?
Three intentional communities who responded won cash prizes!
Laird Schaub
FIC Executive Secretary

Researcher Bjorn Grinde (top left,
visiting Findhorn Community.)

Who’s Happier Now?

Durham Central Park (Durham NC),
Daybreak (Portland OR), and
Bellingham Cohousing (Bellingham WA),
that’s who!

These three intentional communities listed in our online directory received early Christmas presents from researchers in New York—cash prizes of $3000, $2000, and $1000 respectively—via the lottery drawing held for communities who had members participate in a survey that was investigating whether people are happier living in intentional community.

Over the course of nearly four months, the team of Bjorn Grinde (chief scientist with the Norwegian Institute of Public Health), David Sloan Wilson (distinguished professor of biology and anthropology at SUNY Binghamton), and Ian MacDonald (PhD student at SUNY Binghamton) collected 1007 responses from 170 different countries.

As you may recall, we promoted this survey in the FIC eNewsletter Aug 23, and apparently our support made a big difference in their response rate, so everyone can take a bow on this one. Once the researchers reached their goal of 1000 responses, they closed the survey and conducted a computer-assisted lottery drawing that identified the lucky winners above—who will receive their windfall earnings just in time to be included in 2015 budgeting.

The researchers will now turn their attention to analyzing the data, with the aim of publishing next year. FIC will receive those results as soon as they are available and we’ll keep you posted on what was learned.

Meanwhile, here’s hoping that the New Year will be a happy one for us all!