Happiness and satisfaction research pre and during the COVID-19 pandemic: a bibliometric analysis of global scientific literature

Abstract

Background: The study provides a comprehensive analysis of trends of global scientific research, comparing pre-coronavirus disease (COVID 19) and during COVID-19 research in happiness and satisfaction, from 2014 up to 2021. Methods: The study period of the current research was divided into two phases, before the COVID-19 pandemic (1998 documents) and during COVID-19 (2020 until December 18, 2021). The Scopus database was comprehensively searched on relevant publications on Happiness and Satisfaction. Only articles published in English were retrieved. Bibliometric indicators were analyzed using Bibliometrix, an R package, and VOSviewer. Var1.6.6. Bibliometric indicators include the year of publications, authors, region, subject areas, countries, institutions, journals, country collaboration. Authorship productivity was presented in the final analysis. Results: A total of 3069 documents were extracted from Scopus. Overall, articles retrieved were written by 5220 authors before COVID-19 (2014-2019) and 3520 authors during COVID-19 (2020-2022), published in 2593 journals, with 83 counties represented before COVID-19 and 84 during COVID-19, and 21.66 average citations per document before COVID-19 and 30.4 average citations per document during COVID-19. Journal of Happiness Studies led in the number of articles produced. University of California was the most productive institution both before (number of publications [NP] = 42) and during (NP = 19) the COVID-19 pandemic. The US was the most productive country on multiple metrices; firstly, based on the most productive country both before (NP = 341) and during the pandemic (NP = 145), and secondly, based on the multiple country publications metric both before (NP = 34) and during the pandemic (NP = 34). Conclusions: This bibliometric study demonstrates that the COVID-19 pandemic has not significantly affected the productivity of happiness and satisfaction researchers; however, there are subtle changes in thematic evolution that will probably inform the direction of happiness research in the coming decade.

Tracking Happiness in Times of COVID-19: A Bibliometric Exploration

“…Furthermore, the substantial number of authors involved in multi-authored documents (8893) relative to single-authored documents (89) underscores the prevalence of collaborative research efforts in this domain. Similar results were also presented in the bibliometric analysis conducted by Pang et al [82], where authors for single-authored documents were 375 and 4845 authors for multi-authored documents during COVID-19.…”

“…The analysis reveals a total of 8982 unique authors, who collectively account for 10,257 appearances across the extracted documents. In the bibliometric study conducted by Pang et al [82] on happiness and satisfaction before and during COVID-19, the results showed that there were 5220 unique authors before COVID-19, between 2014 and 2019, and 3520 unique authors during COVID-19 (2020-2022). The data suggest a strong collaborative network among authors in this field.…”

“…In Table 8, we observe the first author's name, publication year, and publishing journal, the paper's title, a short description of the purpose of the research, the methodology used by researchers, and the data structure or collection. Several bibliometric studies [82,89,96,97] have used the analysis of the top 10 most cited papers as a metric to understand research trends and their impact in the areas of well-being and happiness. These studies demonstrate the value of analyzing the top 10 most cited papers as a metric in bibliometric research, particularly in understanding the impact and trends in the fields of well-being, happiness, and mental health.…”