Happiness and activities as propensities.

The research proceeded in two stages. The intention at the first stage was to develop a comprehensive activities inventory (i.e., the Memorial University of Newfoundland Activities Inventory, or MUNAI) that reflected recurrent content themes in interview data obtained from elderly adults. The intention at the second stage was to test a reactivity model and a propensity model of happiness-activity relationships in an 18-month longitudinal design. The reactivity model asserts that happiness, in part, is determined by activity levels. The claim of the propensity model is that both happiness and activity indices are reflections of different underlying propensities. The results supported the propensity model in that (a) activity structure retained stability over the longitudinal interval, (b) the relative standing of individuals on both happiness and the structural activity indices retained stability and, (c) the happiness-activities relationship was of a limited order.