Measuring Happiness in Academic Environment: A Case Study of the School of Engineering at Taylor's University (Malaysia)

Research on measuring the happiness and general wellbeing of both staff and students at Higher Learning Education Providers (HLEP) has become an important component for the management team at the School, Faculty and University when introducing new plans and future policies related to cultivating a positive teaching and learning environment. Therefore, an attempt has been undertaken to measure the general happiness at the School of Engineering (SoE) at Taylor's University through the development of Gross National Happiness Index (GIHI) which took into account nine key areas that fulfilled various criteria. Inspired by the Gross National Happiness Index (GNH) which was developed by the Centre for Bhutan Studies as an official national measure of happiness, an attempt was undertaken to conceptualize the idea from GNH and develop a happiness indicator for the SoE which gave birth to Gross Institutional Happiness Index (GIHI). This article details the methodology and stages undertaken towards the development and the subsequent implementation of GIHI within the SoE at Taylor's University Lakeside Campus (TULC) to compute the percentage of people who are happy and percentage of domains in which not-yet-happy people already enjoy sufficiency.