We apologize that the blog language is currently English.

One of the goals of our study is to find out how well the people living in Denmark are coping with the strains resulting from the Corona outbreak. A simple and powerful way to find out how someone is doing is to ask them whether they are happy - and so we did.

Figure 1 shows how the people who answered our survey felt throughout the different times of the day. The red dots display the typical (i.e., average) happiness for each time of the day. According to the red dots, our mood changes somewhat across the day, but is overall pretty stable. The most happy times are during the middle of the days on Sundays.

But Figure 1 also shows the answers of individual people as black dots. Looking at these black dots, we see that there is quite some variation in how happy people feel throughout the day. Some people have felt very happy while others did not so much. In the coming months we will put a lot of effort in trying to understand these differences.

A first idea that we have discussed so far is that particular during these days, it seems important how well people get along with their families or flatmates, that is, with the people they live together with in one household. After all, we now spend much more time together and depend on each other.

Figure 2 supports this idea. On the Y-axis we see how happy each respondent has felt throughout the past week, and on the X-axis we see their respective answer with regards to the question whether they can solve problems together with the people they live in one household. The red line summarizes the overall pattern. That is, who can solve problems together as a household are overall more happy and are thus better able to cope with the strains resulting from the Corona outbreak.

But how about those living alone? Do they fare better because they do not need to quarrel with others? Or are they less happy than those who live together with others? According to the final figure of this blog post the answer is: It depends. Those who live alone feel less happy than those who live together with others with whom they can solve problems together (answers 4 or “Very much” on the scale displayed in Figure 2). But they feel slightly more happy than those who live with others with whom they cannot solve problems together so well (answers “Not at all” or up to 3 on the scale displayed in Figure 2).

An important question for the coming weeks is thus: Will those living together remain their harmony and solve problems together? By starting to analyze the changes of our respondents’ answers over the course of the next weeks, we will hopefully be able to find out. And you can help us by participating:

Link to Danish study: here

Link to English study: here