In their study, Takaharu Goto and his colleagues evaluated the patients' level of ikigai based on their responses to the question, 'Do you have any pleasure or ikigai?' Participants rated their ikigai on a scale from 0 to 5, where 0 indicated no ikigai and 5 indicated a high level of ikigai.
Simplified method for assessing ikigai
Nick: Well, this is interesting, because it's all done to assess people's ikigai, what makes their life worth living. So how did you measure the participants’ level of ikigai?
Takaharu: In the study, ikigai was assessed through the patient's response to the questions: do you have any pleasure or ikigai? on the basis of the previous report. As an operational definitions, this subjective score of 0 indicated having no ikigai, and 5 indicated having higher ikigai.
The participants were asked to rate self-rated ikigai on the scale of 0 to 5, with higher scores representing higher ikigai.
Nick: Okay, so quite a simplistic approach. The question, do you have any pleasure or ikigai? And 0 to 5. So I think this is similar to the Likert scale or maybe not. And obviously, five would be highest level, and zero would mean no ikigai at all.
Takaharu: To brand this study design, simplifying the question is very important, because people need to answer many questions. So simplifying the question is very important.
Nick: Understand. Okay, so with that, what did the study reveal?
Takaharu: This study reveals that affective psychological status, such as depression, has a large impact on ikigai, along with physical, cognitive, psychological, and social conditions. Thus, it is appropriate to consider that good affective psychological status is a fundamental condition for having ikigai.
Nick: Yeah, this is interesting, I guess, as we get older, our physical abilities become restricted, perhaps, because of that, we socialize less, and we spend maybe more time alone. And so then we have, I guess, more time to reflect on our life, and it impacts our psychological health.
So maybe if we're have good health, we can reminisce and think about good memories, and still have a positive outlook on life. But I imagine, loneliness also comes into this, especially in hilly and mountainous areas where it's harder to access and visit friends or family.