We will convene for the Applied Statistics Workshop (Gov 3009) tomorrow on Wednesday (10/24).

The speaker is Tyler J. VanderWeele (Harvard School of Public Health) who will be presenting his work "On the Promotion of Human Flourishing, with Methodological Reflections" (paper link 1; paper link 2)

Abstract:  Many empirical studies throughout the social and biomedical sciences focus only on very narrow outcomes such as income, or a single specific disease state, or a measure of positive affect. Human well-being or flourishing, however, consists in a much broader range of states and outcomes, certainly including mental and physical health, but also encompassing happiness and life satisfaction, meaning and purpose, character and virtue, and close social relationships. The empirical literature from longitudinal, experimental, and quasiexperimental studies is reviewed in attempt to identify major determinants of human flourishing, broadly conceived. Measures of human flourishing are proposed. Discussion is given to the implications of a broader conception of human flourishing, and of the research reviewed, for policy, and for future research in the biomedical and social sciences. Discussion will also be given to the methodological implications of attempts to study numerous outcomes at once and to a proposed movement towards outcome-wide longitudinal designs for causal inference.