Practical application of the Lima Happiness Scale in workers of service companies at Barquisimeto, Venezuela

Abstract

The objective of this paper is to obtain indicators to allow to measure the happiness degree for a sample of workers, through the Alarcon Happiness Scale and the Subjective Happiness Scale. It was applied on service companies295 employees working in Barquisimeto, Venezuela. The scale consists of 27 Likert-type items with five response alternatives. Construct reliability and validity was set through the Cronbach alpha statistic and exploratory factor analysis with the principal component method, and Varimax-type orthogonal rotation prior result of the Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin test. The results obtained through various statistical tests pointed to the adequacy of the happiness scale, its validity and reliability, since the four factors (positive life meaning, satisfaction with life, personal fulfillment and joy for life) explain 90.1% of a worker’s happiness. In conclusion, it can be considered that workers expresses full happiness instead of temporary states thereof.