engleski

Happy Treat: Food and Drink as Important Parts of Daily Life and Happiness

The aim of this study is to explore the content of lay definitions of happiness containing food/drink and food-related terms. This research is part of CRO- WELL- the Croatian Longitudinal Study of Well-Being project which was conducted via an online application consisting of a comprehensive battery of questionnaires related to well-being and life events. The current study uses only an open-ended question in which the respondents provide their own definition of happiness by answering the question What is happi- ness for you? Definitions containing food-related terms (N = 207) were selected for the purpose of this study. The central purpose of this research is to explore which meals/food/drink people include in these definitions, and under what circumstances. Some respond- ents mentioned specific types of food/drink, while others (33.3%) used generic terms such as food, lunch, or meal. The most fre- quently mentioned specific food or drink items were coffee (28%) and sweets (22.1%). Two main dimensions of values attributed to food emerged: hedonic (76.8%) - existential (18.3%) and individual (52.2%) -social (44%). The study offers an explanatory model suitable for classifying the main values of food expressed within peoples subjective constructs of happiness.

lay definitions, happiness, food, drink, qualitative

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