In May 2025, respected academic journal, Nature/Springer will publish a special Global Flourishing Study collection of papers, a product of four years of collaboration among more than 40 leading experts from Harvard University, Baylor University and Gallup.

This $43.4 million dollar initiative involves data collection from approximately 200,000 participants, from 22 geographically and culturally diverse countries. Their goal, to answer questions such as what causes people in some countries to flourish, while others don’t?

In this follow up to their initial Friday Forum discussion from December 2023, Pete Peterson, Dean of the School of Public Policy at Pepperdine University interviewed Dr. Byron Johnson, Distinguished Professor of the Social Sciences at Baylor University and Visiting Distinguished Professor in the School of Public Policy at Pepperdine University, to give us a “look under the hood” of what results we might expect to see in May, and what it might mean for American policymakers.

The Global Flourishing Study (GFS) is a longitudinal research study being carried out in collaboration between scholars at the Human Flourishing Program at Harvard and Baylor’s Institute for Studies of Religion, and in partnership with Gallup and the Center for Open Science.
Watch Pete Peterson’s initial Friday Forum interview with Byron Johnson from December 2023.

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