In our efforts toward growth, it is important to know that change is happening. The information that positive change is occurring in our lives gives us important feedback that we are on the right track. In the psychology of joy, we become investigators, our own psychological researchers of ourselves, our relationships, and the world of existence.
A holistic or integral approach to research includes subjective, objective, and inter-subjective ways of researching.
To use an objective research approach to your own growth process, we suggest using the questionnaires and tests available for free at The Authentic Happiness website. After registering you can take the various tests and the results will be displayed and stored on the Authentic Happiness website under ‘My Profile. Using these objective research tools, you can retake the tests at any time to see changes or lack of changes.
- Authentic Happiness Inventory Questionnaire: Measures Overall Happiness
- CES-D Questionnaire: Measures Depression Symptoms
- Fordyce Emotions Questionnaire: Measures Current Happiness
- General Happiness Questionnaire: Assesses Enduring Happiness
- Brief Strengths Test: Measures 24 Character Strengths
- Gratitude Questionnaire: Measures Appreciation about the Past
- Grit Survey: Measures the Character Strength of Perseverance
- Optimism Test: Measures Optimism About the Future
- Transgression Motivations Questionnaire: Measures Forgiveness
- VIA Survey of Character Strengths: Measures 24 Character Strengths
- Work-Life Questionnaire: Measures Work-Life Satisfaction
- Compassionate Love Scale: Measures your tendency to support, help, and understand other people
- Meaning in Life Questionnaire: Measures Meaningfulness
- Satisfaction with Life Scale: Measures Life Satisfaction
Self Compassion Test a simple online tool to measure your level of self-compassion, developed by Kristin Neff Ph.D. a leading researcher and educator on this subject. Research is confirming that self-compassion is an important personal characteristic for positive mental health and psychological healing–Exploring compassion: A meta-analysis of the association between self-compassion and psychopathology
Measures for the “Right” Spiritual Path, or, An MMPI for the Soul “One of the jobs of the field of Transpersonal Psychology will be to someday find ways to evaluate the actual kind of changes that take place in people as a result of spiritual pursuits, and then start correlating those with what kind of techniques we use to bring them about, what kind of people they were in the first place, what their teachers were like their support structures and things like that. So that someday we won’t just kind of expose people to a hodge-podge of spiritual growth techniques and hope something takes, but be able to give something suitable for a particular person.” Charles Tart, PhD