This version of the paper pulls combines your (previously drafted, and hopefully reviewed/edited) Introduction and Literature sections with the remaining sections of the paper.

The main effort for this assignment revolves around describing your data and methods, identifying your hypotheses, conducting your analysis, and presenting your results.  While this is still a draft, and does not have to be perfect, I expect it to be readable, well-referenced and logical.  If there are analyses that you have not yet completed, but expect to conduct, just describe them broadly and include placeholders (e.g., TBD) in the text for your findings.

Here are some expectations for the major sections of this paper:

I. Introduction
This section gives an overview of the main themes in the paper and gives a brief preview of what the paper will cover. This section also clearly states the research question(s) that the paper will address and the organization of the paper.

II. Literature Review (Theory)
This section provides an organized exposition of the ideas and scholarly sources that the student used to develop her/his own ideas for the paper. The literature review should provide a summary of what scholarly work has been done on the student’s area of research (i.e., theory) and also should demonstrate how the student’s work compliments or fits into this existing body of knowledge.

III. Hypotheses
Based on your literature review, you should derive 2-3 bi-variate (or multivariate) hypotheses that you will test in this paper.

IV. Data and Methods
In this section, the student writes a description of the data that the student used for the project (e.g., source, sampling methods, number of observations, general content, etc) along with a description of the methodology used to analyze the data.

V. Empirical Findings/Results
This section is the heart of a traditional research paper. Here you will report the findings from your data analysis, including both descriptive statistics about the individual variables, as well as the results from your bi-variate (or multivariate) analyses. In this part of the paper, you need to draw clear connections between your original research question and the empirical findings. What is the result? How do these empirical findings answer your question(s)?

In this section you also should address any conflicting evidence or limitations in your study. While students think that this weakens their work, it actually strengthens it. By humbly acknowledging the limitations of your work, the reader gets a “truer” picture of your research.

VI. Discussion/Conclusion
This section should summarize your paper and its major findings. You should also speculate about the directions future research ought to take in light of your findings. **IMPORTANT: Your conclusion should also devote some significant space to a discussion of the implications of your work for decision makers or decision making in the topic area. For example if your paper found that there is a relationship between civic engagement and economic development what implications does that have for decision makers interested in promoting economic development? What implications does it have for policy designed to enhance civic engagement? What are the broader implications for the field of political science or other related fields.

VII. References

You must include a reference section with all resources used to inform your work, including any data set you utilized in your analysis. Please cite all sources consistently and using a standard citation style (e.g., APA, Chicago, etc).

Comparaison of happiness index between the USA and Yemen

Lam Ho Yung

Oregon State University

PS 300

Introduction

Yemen is being located in the Middle East region it has kept the country from the scourge of civil war for many years. Yemeni have long suffered from the war and even fell into a humanitarian crisis, to date the humanitarian crisis in Yemen remains the worths in the world (UN, OCHA). To collect data from the World Values Survey 2010-2012, that research involving more than 183 countries. The survey will look at do people are less happy due to the frequent civil war in the country that impact the level of happiness. Therefore the results may indicate that people in the US should be observed to be happier compared to the citizens of Yemen who showed some negativity to happiness related questions when interviewed. Happiness is a sense of well-being, joy, or contentment. When people experience a peaceful life, they tend to be happy in life as compared to people who experience sorrowful or undergone traumatic acts like terrorism. That the citizens of the U.S live happier since the country doesn’t experience frequent wars and, as a result being peaceful, which should directly proportional to the economic performance of the country and the happiness level in the country. Countries in the Middle East have been experiencing frequent terrorist attacks and fights amongst themselves, Yemen being one of the countries in the Middle East it is not an exception either (WHR, 2019).

The reason as to why I chose this topic is the experience of countries in the Middle East experiencing different types of wars in the recent past. While the U.S has been comparably peaceful with only the exception of the 9/11 attack that was aimed at causing fear, havoc, and anxiety to the country. Hence, based on the world’s values survey I want to compare the level of happiness amongst the U.S citizens as opposed to the citizens of Yemen in the Middle East region that is often and currently facing civil war.

War normally has a detrimental effect on the level of social capital and happiness which is inversely proportional to the distance from the area affected by war, (Guriev and Melnikov, 2018). The main aim of this research paper is to compare the impact war has on the level of happiness in a given country. In order to answer the question of the research study on the impact, war has on the level of happiness for citizens of a given country. I used data from a conducted survey of “V10” and “V185” from the world values codebook. Also, the study will answer if war has a positive or negative effect on the level of happiness for the citizens of the affected state. The study will use data from surveys that will be analyzed using the chi-square test and hence results and conclusions are given afterward.

Literature Review

According to research its documented that the effect of war on happiness is normally immense. Statistics indicate that at least 191 million people have faced death as a result of the war in the twentieth century, (Iqbal, 2006: 631). A huge number of people experienced severe injuries and were left disabled and hence their lives were filled with suffering for their entire lives since they depended on others for their survival. Hence such people who have undergone such traumatizing scenarios in their lives have a lower probability of being happy.

Additionally, war affects the level of the economy of the country, cultural heritage, infrastructure in the country is negatively affected since there are no developments. Further, the GDP of the country experiencing wars drops by 2.2% annually compared to any other nation not experiencing wars, (Coupe, 2016). The lives of citizens of the affected country go down and live by extreme suffering trying to make ends meet in order to survive. Consequently, the lives of people whose countries have experienced wars are more likely to be sorrowful sad, and full of struggles as compared to the nations that are peaceful, (Koubi, 2005. P.69).

Wars can be as a result of geographical boundary conflicts among states or clans in the same country. Differences in political interest also result in fights and eventually wars that affect the entire country as in the case for Yemen where political conflicts arose between the government and the armed movement, (Niclas, 2011: p.458). Wars increase the level of anxiety and fear in the population. And hence negative national stress experienced by citizens of the country affects the happiness of its citizens, (Frey, 2011).

According to (Welsch, 2008), wars could result from the following areas, civil wars, terrorism where a particular group is targeted with the aim of creating havoc, and building up fear as to what happened to the US in 2011. Finally, certain events and countries. Wars reduce the economic well-being of people, results in fear, agony for losing loved ones, suffering for those left with injuries, and those whose parents are killed, (Frey, 2018). This reduces the level of happiness amongst the affected and it is difficult for one to regain happiness.

As a result, this research paper is aimed at comparing the impact of war on the happiness index of a country by comparing two states which are the USA, (Sachs, 2017) and Yemen that are on two extreme ends of peace. This paper will compare the happiness index in the US which is known to experience fewer wars and happiness indexes in Yemen which is known to have experienced and still experiencing wars due to political conflicts.

Work cited

https://www.unocha.org/yemen/about-ocha-yemen, Crisis in Yemen, Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, UN.

https://worldhappiness.report/ed/2019/changing-world-happiness/, The Evolution of World Happiness 2005-2018. World Happiness Report (2019).

Semantic Scholar Frey, Bruno S. “Peace, war and happiness: Bruder Klaus as wellbeing facilitator.” International Journal of Wellbeing 1.2 (2011).

Frey, B. S. (2018). Happiness and War. In Economics of Happiness (pp. 63-70). Springer, Cham.

Guriev, Sergei, and Nikita Melnikov. “Happiness convergence in transition countries.” Journal of Comparative Economics 46.3 (2018): 683-707.

Coupe, T., & Obrizan, M. (2016). The impact of war on happiness: The case of Ukraine. Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 132, 228-242.

Berggren, Niclas, and Christian Bjørnskov. “Is the importance of religion in daily life related to social trust? Cross-country and cross-state comparisons.” Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization 80.3 (2011): 459-480.

SACHS, J. D. (2017). Restoring American happiness. World Happiness Report 2017, 178.

Iqbal, Z., & Zorn, C. (2006). Sic Semper Tyrannus? Power, repression, and assassination since the Second World War. The Journal of Politics, 68(3), 489-501.

Koubi, V. (2005). War and economic performance. Journal of Peace Research, 42(1), 67-82.

Here are some notes about the (eventual) content of each of these sections:

·

· Introduction: You already submitted a motivation for your research topic this week, which you can draw on: Briefly explain why this topic interests you and state your main research question and data sources. Your final introduction should also include a short overview of how the paper is organized.

·

· Literature Review: Find some academic sources that seem relevant to your topic (Your final paper should include at least 8 sources, 5 of which should be academic/peer-reviewed). Google Scholar  (Links to an external site.) is very helpful for this. At this point you don’t have to provide an annotated bibliography – that’s due on July 26, but just list the sources you have found so far.

· Your final literature review should provide an organized exposition of the ideas and scholarly sources that you used to develop your ideas for the paper. The literature review should provide a summary of what scholarly work has been done in your paper’s area of research.

·

· Hypotheses: In your topic identifications you also listed variables you would like to use and the relationship between the variables you are interested in. If you have not made clear which specific variables you want to use and which one is the dependent and which ones are the independent variables, please do so now!  At this point also formulate a main hypothesis (this can still change later) – what do you expect to see using the data and variables you are looking at, i.e. which relationship between your variables do you think you will see?

·

· Data and methods: Explain which survey you are using and which variables. It is a good idea to add a sentence on what the purpose of this dataset is, e.g. capture people’s values on a variety of topics in case of the World Value Survey. Regarding methods, we have only learned about a limited number of methods at this point (looking at frequencies, crosstabs, conducting the chi-square test), so please refer to these methods in this section. You are of course going to learn more as the course progresses and you can then change your methods section accordingly.

·

· Findings/Results: You are unlikely to have any findings at this point. If there is anything you have already found in your lab assignments, you can refer to it in this section. If you do that, please make the connection to your research question clear!

· In your final paper this section will be the most important. Here you will report the findings from your data analysis. In this part of the paper, you need to draw clear connections between your original research question and the empirical findings. What is the result? How do these empirical findings answer your question(s)? In this section you also should address any conflicting evidence or limitations in your study. While students think that this weakens their work, it actually strengthens it. By humbly acknowledging the limitations of your work, the reader gets a “truer” picture of your research.

·

·

·

· Discussion/Conclusion: This sums up your results and also raises points for discussion and implications for policy-makers. Again, this is not something you can do right now, but you can add some bullet points on what you think might be relevant here.

2010-2012 World Values Survey

Variables : V2 Countries = 840 USA, 887= Yemen

V10 Feeling of happiness

1. Very happy

2. Rather happy

3. Not very happy

4. Not at all happy

V185 A civil war

1. Very much

2. A good deal

3. Not much

4. Not at all

5. DK/ NA

Frequencies:

Frequency of (United States) V2=840

Frequency of (Yemen) V2=887

Crosstab + Chi-square (United States)

Crosstab + Chi-square (Yemen)

Correlations (United States)

Correlations (Yemen)