Philippines among countries with highest 'positive experiences'—Gallup

The Philippines is among the countries with the highest “positive experiences” in 2022, according to the survey by American analytics firm Gallup.

According to the 2023 Gallup Global Emotions Report, the Philippines tied with Indonesia, Mexico, Paraguay, and Vietnam and scored 85 in the positive experience index.

Guatemala and Panama received 84, while El Salvador got 83. Afghanistan obtained 34 on the global index, making it the country with the lowest score worldwide.

The Gallup Positive and Negative Experience Indexes gauge the emotions and feelings of respondents, which are closely tied to their perceptions of living standards, personal freedoms, and the presence of social networks.

The index scores for each country range from zero to 100, with higher scores indicating a greater prevalence of positive emotions within a country.

The global survey also found that positive emotions recovered last year but the rise in negative emotions remained at the record-high set in 2021 during the COVID-19 pandemic.

According to Gallup, seven in every ten people worldwide felt more well-rested (71%), experienced a lot of enjoyment (72%) or smiled or laughed a lot (73%) in 2022 than the year before.

Around nine in ten felt treated with respect (87%) while people were far less likely, as they are typically, to say they learned or did something interesting the day before the interview (50%).

Meanwhile, four in ten adults have experienced a lot of worry (41%) or stress (40%), and nearly one in three experienced a lot of physical pain (32%) while more than one in four experienced sadness (27%) and slightly fewer experienced anger (23%).

“The still-high percentages on most of the index items kept the world’s overall score elevated at 33. Scores worldwide ranged from a high of 58 in Afghanistan and Sierra Leone to a low of 11 in Vietnam, which appeared at the bottom of this list for the first time,” the poll said.

The survey was conducted through telephone or face-to-face interviews with more than 147,000 adults in 142 countries and areas. For results based on the total sample of national adults in 2021, the margin of sampling error ranges between ±1.6 and ±5.6 percentage points at the 95% confidence level. – BAP, GMA Integrated News