The Role of Gratitude Journaling to Enhance Happiness: An Intervention Study

This study examines the effectiveness of gratitude journaling as a psychological intervention in improving happiness levels of young working adults. A quasi-experimental pretest-posttest design was adopted with a sample of 216 adults (aged 20 to 30 years) assigned to either the experimental or the control group (108 participants per group). The Oxford Happiness Questionnaire was used to measure happiness levels before and after the intervention.The experimental group members were prompted to engage in a gratitude journaling intervention for ten weeks, while the control group members were not subjected to any intervention. Both dependent samples and independent samples t-tests were used to demonstrate a statistically significant increase in happiness in the experimental group after the intervention. But a non-significant difference was observed between the two groups following the intervention. This finding can be explained by relatively higher happiness levels in the control group, and is indicative of a ceiling effect.Despite this shortcoming, these results validate the use of gratitude journaling as a low-cost, simple and effective intervention within the field of Positive Psychology. The findings highlight its potential application to improve subjective wellbeing at an individual level, especially in young adults.