LBL Flourishing Index Methodology

The instrument synthesizes evidence from the Global Flourishing Study (Wave 1, Nature Mental Health, April 2025), Ryff's Psychological Well-Being model (Ryff, 1989), Snyder's Hope Theory (Snyder et al., 1991), Ersner-Hershfield's future-self continuity work (Ersner-Hershfield et al., 2009), and Self-Determination Theory (Deci & Ryan, 2000). It does not implement any single existing scale verbatim; items are original to LBL, scoring is transparent, and the framework is released under CC BY-NC 4.0 for free educational and non-commercial use with attribution.

This page is the complete methodological disclosure. It does not replace the tool's in-page methodology summary, which is condensed for use during a session; it expands on every component, names the literature each construct is drawn from, and is honest about which scoring parameters are empirical and which are LBL judgment.

The output is not a diagnosis. It is a structured snapshot of how a person's life is currently resourced across the major spheres of well-being identified in contemporary research. The composite is shown alongside the per-dimension breakdown precisely so the user can see which dimensions are pulling the headline number up and which are pulling it down — a profile, not a verdict.

“Flourishing” in this framework is broader than “happiness” and broader than “life satisfaction.” A person can be happy in a hedonic moment-to-moment sense but feel their life lacks purpose; can have meaningful work but be socially isolated; can have wealth and health but feel disconnected from their values; can have all of these but feel that the trajectory of their life is bending in a direction that does not match who they want to become. A flourishing measure that collapses these distinctions into a single number is doing less work than the construct deserves.

The LBL Flourishing Index treats well-being as multidimensional and tier-structured: nine load-bearing core dimensions (Tier 1) drive the composite and the archetype, and seven contextual dimensions (Tier 2) provide context for interpreting the Tier 1 pattern. The user sees both tiers, but the math is honest about which is doing the heavy lifting.

The classical argument for a composite goes back to Aristotle's eudaimonia — the claim that a flourishing life is not one thing but a constellation of goods that hang together. Twentieth-century empirical psychology took two roughly orthogonal turns. The hedonic tradition, anchored in Diener's subjective well-being research, treats well-being as the positive balance of affect and a global judgment of life satisfaction. The eudaimonic tradition, anchored in Ryff's Psychological Well-Being model (Ryff, 1989), treats well-being as the realization of human potential across six facets: self-acceptance, positive relations with others, autonomy, environmental mastery, purpose in life, and personal growth.

The Harvard Flourishing Index (VanderWeele, 2017) brought these traditions into a more integrative six-domain framework: happiness and life satisfaction, mental and physical health, meaning and purpose, character and virtue, close social relationships, and financial and material stability. The Global Flourishing Study (Wave 1 published in Nature Mental Health, April 2025) operationalized that framework in a longitudinal panel of over 200,000 participants across 22 countries, providing the first genuinely cross-cultural normative anchor for flourishing measurement.

The LBL Flourishing Index builds on this composite tradition but extends it. Where the most widely cited short-form measure covers six domains in twelve items, the LBL instrument adds nine further facets that the six-domain framework either does not explicitly include or treats only implicitly:

• Inner Life & Self-Awareness — the meta-cognitive capacity to attend to one's own experience without immediately acting on it (drawn from the contemplative-practice and mindfulness literature)
• Personal Growth — the perceived trajectory of becoming, distinct from current achievement (Ryff's growth facet, extended)
• Autonomy — the felt sense of acting from one's own values rather than from external pressure (Deci & Ryan, 2000)
• Time Freedom — the felt presence or absence of time poverty, increasingly recognized as a load-bearing variable in modern well-being (Whillans, Dunn, et al.)
• Environmental Fit — the perceived fit between the person and their physical, social, and cultural environment
• Prospective Self-Continuity & Hope — the perceived continuity between the present self and the imagined future self, combined with agency-and-pathway thinking (Ersner-Hershfield et al., 2009; Snyder et al., 1991)
• Integrity — the felt alignment between stated values and lived action
• Service — the experience of one's life as oriented outward toward others' welfare
• Community — the felt presence of a wider belonging beyond intimate relationships

The result is a 16-dimension framework organized into two tiers. Tier 1 (9 core dimensions) drives the composite, archetype assignment, and Growth Edge identification. Tier 2 (7 contextual dimensions) appears on the user's results page but contributes only 20% of the displayed composite — these are facets worth noticing for awareness, not facets worth optimizing for a number.

Each dimension is measured with one or two items. Tier 1 dimensions use two items each (18 items total) to give a more stable per-dimension score; Tier 2 dimensions use a single item each (7 items total) because they are contextual modifiers rather than load-bearing components. All items use a 0–10 sliding scale; no item is reverse-coded — higher always means more of the dimension. Items are LBL-original.

The wording of each dimension's items is calibrated to capture the construct rather than the construct's name. For example, the Hope dimension does not ask “how hopeful are you?” (which conflates trait optimism with future-thinking) — it asks two items that operationalize Snyder's hope-theory components (agency and pathways) and Ersner-Hershfield's future-self continuity. This is how we get a 0–10 number that is actually about hope as a construct, not about how a respondent feels at the moment of answering.

Architecture summary

Tier 1 (core) — 9 dimensions, 18 items, drives composite at 80% weight

The well-established load-bearing components of well-being. These are the dimensions where the empirical literature most strongly supports treatment as separable, measurable, intervention-responsive facets of human flourishing. Tier 1 also drives archetype assignment and the trajectory model.

Tier 2 (contextual) — 7 dimensions, 7 items, contributes 20% of composite weight

Facets that condition how Tier 1 plays out for a given person. A person with strong Tier 1 dimensions but poor Environmental Fit, low Autonomy, or chronic Time Poverty has a different lived situation than someone with the same Tier 1 numbers and resourced Tier 2 dimensions. Tier 2 contributes to the composite at 20% so this conditioning is reflected in the headline, but the lower weight reflects that Tier 2 modifies Tier 1 rather than displacing it.

Tier 2 dimensions are facets that condition how Tier 1 plays out for a given person. A user can have strong Tier 1 dimensions and still be living a poorly-resourced life if their autonomy is constrained, their time is owned by others, or their physical and social environment fits them poorly. Tier 2 captures these conditioning facets without giving them equal weight to the load-bearing core.

LBL-FI v2.0 scoring uses only arithmetic operations — no opaque weightings buried inside the model, no reverse-coded items, no transformations that obscure the relationship between inputs and outputs. The user can in principle verify every number on the results page using the formulas below.

Stage 1: Dimension scores

For each Tier 1 dimension d_i, the two items are averaged:

d_i = (item_A + item_B) / 2

For each Tier 2 dimension t_j, the single item value is the dimension score:

t_j = item_value

All dimension scores therefore fall in the [0, 10] interval.

Stage 2: Tier averages

The Tier 1 average is the unweighted mean of the 9 core dimension scores:

tier1_avg = (d1 + d2 + d3 + d4 + d5 + d6 + d7 + d8 + d9) / 9

The Tier 2 average is the unweighted mean of the 7 contextual dimension scores:

tier2_avg = (t1 + t2 + t3 + t4 + t5 + t6 + t7) / 7

Stage 3: Displayed composite (80/20 weighted)

The headline composite score shown on the results page weights Tier 1 at 0.8 and Tier 2 at 0.2:

composite = (tier1_avg × 0.8) + (tier2_avg × 0.2)

The 80/20 weighting reflects the architectural distinction described in the Tier 1 / Tier 2 section above. Tier 1 dimensions are load-bearing components; Tier 2 are contextual modifiers. The composite falls in [0, 10].

Stage 4: Variance for archetype assignment

Archetype assignment uses the unweighted Tier 1 average (not the 80/20 composite) together with the standard deviation across the 9 Tier 1 dimensions:

sigma = sqrt(mean((d_i − tier1_avg)²))

The combination of magnitude (tier1_avg) and spread (sigma) lets the tool distinguish, for example, a person who is uniformly thriving (high tier1_avg, low sigma) from one who is spiking on one or two dimensions while the others lag (high tier1_avg, high sigma) — two response patterns that produce nearly identical composite scores but very different lived realities.

Archetypes are pattern-based summaries of the 9-dimension Tier 1 profile — intended to help a user recognize their flourishing shape at a glance, not just their flourishing height. They are descriptive heuristics, not diagnostic categories. Two people with the same composite score can be in very different archetypes depending on the spread of their Tier 1 dimensions.

The matching logic is sequential — the first rule that matches wins — so Adrift always takes priority as a care-aware safety routing. The full decision tree, in order:

Why this works: magnitude AND spread

A composite score alone tells you the user's elevation. The standard deviation across dimensions tells you the user's shape. Two users with composite = 7.5 can have radically different lived realities: one is uniformly resourced across all 9 dimensions (Anchored); the other is at 9.5 on three dimensions and 4.5 on three others (Spiked). The same single number, two different lives.

The σ thresholds (1.2 and 1.8) were chosen to separate “even” from “spiked” patterns in a way that maps cleanly onto observed real-world response shapes. They are not quantile cuts of a specific empirical σ distribution; this is one of the parameters explicitly named as LBL judgment in the “What is empirical vs. judgment” section below.

The trajectory chart is one of the more distinctive features of the LBL Flourishing Index. It does two things: it computes a model-based projection of where the user's response pattern suggests they are headed, and it compares that model projection to the user's stated expectations (q13 and q14).

The formulas

The 5-year prediction uses the current composite as autoregressive anchor (50%), the current Hope dimension as the strongest single predictor of forward well-being (30%), and a 5-year-equivalent slice of country-age normative drift (20%):

predicted_5y = 0.50 × composite + 0.30 × hope + 0.20 × (composite + drift_5y)

The end-of-life prediction shifts weight toward hope (because over long horizons hope explains more variance) and applies full life-stage drift:

predicted_end = 0.30 × composite + 0.50 × hope + 0.20 × (composite + drift_to_end)

Both projections are clamped to the [0, 10] interval. The country-age drift comes from the published GFS Wave 1 age-curve patterns — in most countries the curve tilts gently upward with age, so the model gives older or higher-hope users slightly more upside on the projection.

The divergence narrative

The chart text compares the user's stated Q13 (5-year forward expectation) and Q14 (end-of-life worth) against the model's predictions. Four divergence patterns produce four different narrative templates:

• Aligned (|q13 − pred_5y| + |q14 − pred_end| < 1.5): “Your stated expectations align closely with what your data statistically resembles.”
• Above the model (stated > predicted on both): “You expect to flourish more than your current composite alone would predict — your hope is doing meaningful work in your forecast.”
• Below the model (stated < predicted on both): “You expect to flourish less than your composite alone would predict — something in your current outlook is pulling your forecast down.”
• Mixed: “Your stated expectations diverge from the model in interesting ways. Worth sitting with which line feels more true.”

The Adrift override

When q14 ≤ 2, the trajectory chart is replaced with a care-aware skip block. A predictive line chart would not honor what someone in that state is carrying; the skip block names that explicitly and surfaces 988 and Crisis Text Line as immediate paths forward. The trajectory model returns to normal rendering as soon as q14 moves above 2 (e.g., on retake).

Flourishing Age is a communicative device, not a clinical measure. The algorithm takes the user's displayed composite, finds the age bracket in their country's normative table whose average is closest to that composite, and reports the midpoint of that bracket. The gap between that age and the user's actual age is reported as “years ahead” or “years behind” — descriptive, not diagnostic.

The normative anchor is the Global Flourishing Study Wave 1 — a longitudinal panel study of over 200,000 participants across 22 countries, with nationally representative sampling, coordinated by the Center for Open Science, Baylor University, Gallup, and the Harvard Human Flourishing Program. Wave 1 results were published in Nature Mental Health on April 30, 2025 (VanderWeele, Johnson, Bialowolski et al., 2025).

Data construction

The country × age-bracket table embedded in the tool is constructed from GFS Wave 1 country-level reports together with the published age-curve patterns — not directly drawn from a GFS-published country × age × FI grid (which is not published in directly usable form). Values are approximate and intended for orienting context, not precision benchmarking.

Two further limits worth being honest about: (1) LBL-FI is a 16-dimension instrument; GFS uses a 6-domain instrument. Both are 0–10 scales centered on broadly similar wellbeing constructs, but they are not identical instruments, so the comparison is loose. (2) The 22 countries in GFS Wave 1 cover most populated continents but not all countries; users whose country is not in the GFS list see the “OTHER” row, which averages across the sample.

Direction of the curve

Across most GFS countries the well-being curve tilts upward with age for adults — mid-life and older adults score modestly higher on flourishing than young adults, on average. This is one of the more robust cross-cultural findings of Wave 1. It means: a younger adult scoring near their country's older-adult average is flourishing unusually well for their cohort; a midlife adult scoring near the young-adult average is flourishing below the typical trajectory for their peer group. The Flourishing Age is doing this comparison automatically.

This section exists because v2.0 is honest about a fact that wellbeing tools often hide: some of the parameters in this scoring pipeline are not empirically derived constants. Stating this explicitly so the reader is not misled into thinking everything is data-driven.

Empirically grounded

• The 16 construct definitions are drawn from peer-reviewed literature (Ryff, VanderWeele, Snyder, Ersner-Hershfield, Deci & Ryan, Whillans, Waldinger). The wording of items is LBL-original, but the underlying constructs the items operationalize are well-established.
• The arithmetic operations — means, standard deviations, weighted averages — are mathematical primitives with no proprietary content.
• Country-level normative comparison is anchored to the published GFS Wave 1 dataset.
• The Adrift safety routing thresholds (d7 ≤ 3.0 OR q14 ≤ 2) are calibrated to the population-level distribution of GFS-reported hope and meaning items; they are not arbitrary.

LBL working judgment

• The 80/20 Tier 1 / Tier 2 composite weighting reflects our judgment that core dimensions are load-bearing and contextual dimensions are modifiers. It is not derived from a published factor-analytic fit. A reasonable researcher might choose 75/25 or 85/15.
• The archetype σ thresholds (1.2 and 1.8) were chosen to separate “even” from “spiked” patterns in a way that maps cleanly onto observed real-world response shapes. They are not, e.g., quantile cuts of any specific empirical σ distribution.
• The trajectory model weights — 5-year: 50% composite + 30% hope + 20% drift; end-of-life: 30% composite + 50% hope + 20% drift — reflect the literature on hope as a strong predictor of future subjective well-being (Snyder; Diener; Lucas), but the exact weights are LBL judgment and have not been validated against longitudinal data.

These values will be revised when convergent-validity and longitudinal data are available. The instrument is in active development; convergent-validity studies against the Diener Satisfaction With Life Scale and Ryff's PWB Scales are planned but not yet complete.

Any well-being self-assessment that does not have a serious answer to the question “what happens when a user is in genuine distress?” is doing harm. The Adrift archetype is the LBL Flourishing Index's answer.

The two triggers

The Adrift archetype is assigned when either of two conditions is met:

• d7 (Prospective Self-Continuity & Hope) ≤ 3.0 — the dimension-level signal. A score this low across two items means the user is currently experiencing very limited hope and limited connection to their future self.
• q14 (end-of-life worth) ≤ 2 — the item-level safety signal. q14 asks the user, in plain language, whether they currently expect to look back on their life as worth living. A response of 2 or below is a direct signal of acute distress.

The OR logic means either path triggers Adrift — the dimension-level pattern OR the item-level signal. Adrift fires before all other archetype rules in the decision tree; it cannot be displaced by, e.g., a high composite or low sigma.

What Adrift does

When Adrift is assigned, the results page:

• Surfaces crisis support resources — 988 (US Suicide & Crisis Lifeline) and Crisis Text Line (text HOME to 741741) are presented prominently on the archetype card
• Replaces the trajectory chart with a care-aware skip block that explicitly names why — a predictive line chart would not honor what someone in that state is carrying
• Adjusts the suggestion content for the Growth Edge to emphasize support and connection over performance optimization

Crisis resource accuracy

The 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline replaced the previous 1-800 number in July 2022 and is currently operational throughout the United States. The Crisis Text Line shortcode 741741 is also currently operational. Both resources are verified as of May 2026. If either changes, the tool's crisis-resource references will be updated and the change recorded in the version log.

What this tool does not measure

Several important things are deliberately out of scope:

• Clinical mental health conditions. The tool produces a 0–10 Mental Health dimension score; this is a functional self-report, not a clinical screen. Users worried about depression, anxiety, or other mental health concerns should consult a qualified clinician.
• Trauma history and chronic illness. Both are real and load-bearing for well-being; neither is captured in 25 items. A self-report on present-day flourishing cannot replace a careful clinical history.
• Cognitive function. The LBL Brain Age Index and Cognitive Reserve Estimator address this domain.
• Specific relationship quality. The Close Relationships dimension captures presence-and-reciprocity, not the quality of any specific relationship.
• Spiritual or religious meaning, specifically. Captured indirectly through Meaning & Purpose (d6) and Inner Life (d3), but the tool does not assess religious or spiritual practice specifically.

What this tool has not yet done

• Convergent-validity studies. Planned but not complete. We intend to test LBL-FI against the Diener Satisfaction With Life Scale and Ryff's PWB Scales in a non-commercial research sample.
• Test-retest reliability. Not yet established empirically. The instrument is built for stability of the constructs measured, but the actual two-week stability coefficient has not been calculated.
• Cross-cultural validation. Items are written in English with American cultural anchoring. Cross-cultural adaptation work is on the long-term roadmap but not yet underway.
• Independent factor analysis. The Tier 1 / Tier 2 structure reflects theoretical rationale, not factor-analytic fit. A proper exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis of the 25 items is a clear next step.

Honest framing of the user's experience

A score of 8.6 does not mean the user is flourishing 86% as much as some maximum-flourishing reference person. It means the user's average response across 16 dimensions falls in the upper part of the response range, with the displayed-composite weighting applied. The same is true at the low end: a score of 2.6 means the user is currently in a low-resource state across most dimensions — not that the user is “26%” of anything, and not that this state is fixed.

The tool's results are orientation devices: a snapshot of the present, useful for identifying patterns and informing next steps, not a verdict on the user.

Common questions about the tool, the methodology, and how to interpret your result. These also feed the FAQPage structured data so they appear in search-engine answer panels and voice-assistant responses.

Full bibliography of works cited in this methodology. DOIs and URLs are provided where the work has a verified persistent identifier. All references have been verified against their canonical sources.

1. VanderWeele, T. J. (2017). On the promotion of human flourishing. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 114(31), 8148–8156. doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1702996114
2. VanderWeele, T. J., Johnson, B. R., Bialowolski, P. T., et al. (2025). The Global Flourishing Study: Study profile and initial results on flourishing. Nature Mental Health, April 30, 2025 release. doi.org/10.1038/s44220-025-00423-5
3. Ryff, C. D. (1989). Happiness is everything, or is it? Explorations on the meaning of psychological well-being. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 57(6), 1069–1081. doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.57.6.1069
4. Snyder, C. R., Harris, C., Anderson, J. R., Holleran, S. A., Irving, L. M., Sigmon, S. T., et al. (1991). The will and the ways: Development and validation of an individual-differences measure of hope. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 60(4), 570–585. doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.60.4.570
5. Ersner-Hershfield, H., Garton, M. T., Ballard, K., Samanez-Larkin, G. R., & Knutson, B. (2009). Don't stop thinking about tomorrow: Individual differences in future self-continuity account for saving. Judgment and Decision Making, 4(4), 280–286.
6. Deci, E. L., & Ryan, R. M. (2000). The “what” and “why” of goal pursuits: Human needs and the self-determination of behavior. Psychological Inquiry, 11(4), 227–268. doi.org/10.1207/S15327965PLI1104_01
7. Weziak-Bialowolska, D., McNeely, E., & VanderWeele, T. J. (2019). Flourish Index and Secure Flourish Index: validation in workplace settings. Cogent Psychology, 6(1), 1598926. doi.org/10.1080/23311908.2019.1598926
8. VanderWeele, T. J., McNeely, E., & Koh, H. K. (2019). Reimagining health — flourishing. JAMA, 321(17), 1667–1668. doi.org/10.1001/jama.2019.3035
9. VanderWeele, T. J. (2020). Activities for flourishing: An evidence-based guide. Journal of Positive Psychology and Wellbeing, 4(1), 79–91. hfh.fas.harvard.edu/publications
10. Waldinger, R. J., & Schulz, M. S. (2023). The good life: Lessons from the world's longest scientific study of happiness. Simon & Schuster. Findings from the Harvard Study of Adult Development. adultdevelopmentstudy.org
11. Wrzesniewski, A., & Dutton, J. E. (2001). Crafting a job: Revisioning employees as active crafters of their work. Academy of Management Review, 26(2), 179–201. doi.org/10.5465/amr.2001.4378011
12. Holt-Lunstad, J., Smith, T. B., Baker, M., Harris, T., & Stephenson, D. (2015). Loneliness and social isolation as risk factors for mortality: a meta-analytic review. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 10(2), 227–237. doi.org/10.1177/1745691614568352
13. Global Flourishing Study. Wave 1 country-level data releases and methodology documentation. Retrieved from globalflourishingstudy.com. Multi-institution project coordinated by the Center for Open Science, Baylor University, and Gallup, in partnership with the Harvard Human Flourishing Program.
14. Harvard Human Flourishing Program. Measuring flourishing: overview, instruments, and validation materials. Retrieved from hfh.fas.harvard.edu/measuring-flourishing. Faculty of Arts and Sciences, Harvard University.

How to cite this work

If you reference the LBL Flourishing Index in academic, educational, or professional work, please use one of the following formats:

APA: LifeByLogic. (2026). LBL Flourishing Index: A 16-dimension self-assessment of human flourishing (Version 2.0) [Web application]. https://lifebylogic.com/life-dashboard/flourishing-index

MLA: LifeByLogic. “LBL Flourishing Index: A 16-Dimension Self-Assessment of Human Flourishing.” Version 2.0, 2026, lifebylogic.com/life-dashboard/flourishing-index.

Chicago: LifeByLogic. 2026. “LBL Flourishing Index: A 16-Dimension Self-Assessment of Human Flourishing.” Version 2.0. Accessed [date]. https://lifebylogic.com/life-dashboard/flourishing-index.

Version log

v2.0 — May 14, 2026

Major release. 16 dimensions across 2 tiers (up from 6 domains); 25 items (up from 12); 6 archetypes including care-aware Adrift routing; trajectory projection model with hope-weighted 5y and end-of-life predictions; expanded methodology with full empirical-vs-judgment disclosure; CC BY-NC 4.0 licensing.

v1.0 — May 2, 2026

Initial release. Implemented VanderWeele Secure Flourish Index (12 items, 6 domains, 4-archetype assignment). Superseded by v2.0.

Abiot Y. Derbie, PhD, is a cognitive neuroscientist and the founder of LifeByLogic. His academic research focuses on neuroplasticity, brain development, and neurodevelopmental outcomes; he holds postdoctoral appointments and has published in peer-reviewed neuroscience journals on multimodal neuroimaging and machine learning methods. LifeByLogic is an independent publication of evidence-based interactive tools, owned and operated by Nexus Decision Systems LLC.

Questions about this methodology can be sent to hello@lifebylogic.com. Corrections should be submitted via the corrections page.