Call for Participation: The 'Good Life' Data Challenge
A large-scale collaboration to identify the predictors of a happy, meaningful, and psychologically rich life
The LIVES Centre invites researchers across the social sciences to join a large-scale collaboration addressing a key question: What predicts the feeling of having lived a 'good life' so far?
The Challenge
The challenge is to predict responses to three new items in the 2025 wave of the Swiss Household Panel, a nationally representative longitudinal survey of more than 15,000 adults. These items ask respondents to rate how happy, meaningful, and interesting (psychologically rich) their lives have been so far.
Researchers are invited to submit a proposal using any of the thousands of variables available in the 1999 to 2025 waves of the Swiss Household Panel as predictors. Selected teams will preregister their predictions before the data is publicly released.
The goal is to harness collective interdisciplinary expertise to advance research on the determinants of the 'good life.' The main output will be a collective, coauthored publication.
Why participate in this challenge?
Advancing Research
Use high-quality longitudinal data to contribute to the interdisciplinary literature on well-being.
High-Impact Publication
Co-author a multi-team paper for submission to a leading international journal.
Financial Incentive
Each selected team will receive CHF 1,000.
How to participate?
Any researcher or team affiliated with a university may participate. Submit one proposal per team (600-800 words) by February 15, 2026, using this form.
The form will request:
- Applicant information
- Research questions and theoretical background
- Variables used and methodological approach
What is the procedure?
Selection
Proposals will be selected by the scientific committee based on feasibility, theoretical relevance, and methodological rigor, with a preference for projects that generate predictions for multiple outcomes and use a life-course approach.
📅 Notification: March 20, 2026
Preregistration
Selected teams will preregister hypotheses and analysis plans in spring 2026, before the public release of the Swiss Household Panel data in summer 2026. The LIVES Centre will collect, harmonize, and upload all preregistrations to a shared repository.
📅 Deadline: May 31, 2026
Analysis and output
Teams will analyze the data and submit a standardized report (2-3 pages) in fall 2026. The LIVES Centre will synthesize reports and conduct additional analyses (e.g., standardized comparisons, moderation by age). It will lead a collective, coauthored publication reporting the findings. The teams with the most insightful results will be invited to a workshop to develop a special issue on the topic.
📅 Deadline: November 30, 2026
Which research questions fit this challenge?
Proposals must be theory-driven rather than broad inductive searches across many predictors. We encourage investigations of heterogeneity (e.g., moderation by gender, age, income) but ask teams to avoid third- or higher-order interactions.
If focusing on specific subpopulations, ensure the analytical sample size is sufficient for the planned analyses, as feasibility will be assessed. Analyses must ideally yield variance-based effect sizes (e.g., r, partial R², ηp²).
We will favor proposals that:
Try to predict all three 'good life' items (happiness, meaning, and psychological richness), although proposals focusing on two (or even one) items are welcome if theoretically justified.
Use the survey's longitudinal design by modeling trajectories, cumulative exposure, event timing, or sequences of predictors. Note that the three 'good life' outcomes are observed only once in 2025, so changes in the outcomes themselves cannot be modeled.
- How do income trajectories over the life course predict perceptions of having lived a happy, meaningful, or psychologically rich life?
- How does change in features of social networks predict perceptions of having lived a happy, meaningful, or psychologically rich life?
- How do diverse life events over the life course predict perceptions of having lived a happy, meaningful, or psychologically rich life?
What do we mean by 'good life'?
Decades of research suggest that the 'good life' can be conceptualized in three complementary ways:
A happy life
Enjoyable and comfortable
Diener, 1984; Kahneman, 1999; Layard, 2010
A meaningful life
Fulfilling and purposeful
Frankl, 1985; Ryff, 1989; Steger, 2009
A psychologically rich life
Intense and eventful
Besser & Oishi, 2020; Oishi et al., 2020
These components are linked to different theoretical traditions, and their predictors have mostly been studied in isolation. This project will integrate these traditions and build a comprehensive account of their predictors.
What is the Swiss Household Panel?
The Swiss Household Panel is carried out by the Swiss Centre of Expertise in the Social Sciences (FORS). It is Switzerland's nationally representative longitudinal study and a leading panel study worldwide.
Since 1999, it has followed individuals and households annually, collecting thousands of variables and detailed retrospective life calendars. These variables cover domains such as finances, employment, education, health, family, social networks, values, and political attitudes, any of which can serve as predictors in this project.
How is the "good life" measured?
The LIVES Centre included a new module in the 2025 wave (N > 15,000 adults). Respondents provided retrospective assessments of three items on a 0 ("not at all") to 10 ("a great deal") scale, pretested in a pilot study:
Timeline
Call for proposals
Selection and notification
Preregistration
Analysis and standardized report
Synthesis and publication
Scientific Committee
Projects will be selected by an interdisciplinary LIVES committee composed of:
Information Session
If you would like to schedule a video session with the coordinator to discuss the project, enter your email address using this form. We will contact you within a few weeks.
Contact
LIVES Centre, Géopolis #5785
University of Lausanne, Switzerland
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