The head of the research, Ljiljana Kaliterna Lipovcan, explained that the reason to organise the news conference was to inform the public of the survey and invite them to participate online at www.sreca.hr.
The preliminary results were obtained from answers given by 1,976 respondents since autumn last year, with the majority of respondents being of an average age of 35.2. Most of the respondents (39.7%) were from Zagreb and 41.3% were women.
Happy people live better, are more motivated for work and are healthier, Kaliterna Lipovcan said and added that "most of them said that things aren't that bad."
Even though most of the respondents assessed the quality of life to be similar to other countries, a survey conducted by the institute - CRO Deomskop - shows that the general satisfaction of Croatians is ranked in the last third of European countries.
Denmark tops the rankings in Europe according to the feeling of happiness because it has a stable economic and social welfare state that functions well and its citizens don't have too much to worry about, it was said.
Listing the ten most frequent positive occurrences in the past year, the majority of respondents cited new friends and travel while the fewest cited promotion at work or improvement in health.
The most frequent negative event cited by respondents was illness of someone close to them and the most negative event was being arrested or sexually abused.
The first "Croatian longitudinal research of well-being - CRO-WELL" will be conducted by the "Ivo Pilar" institute with funding provided by the Croatian Science Foundation and advice from the most prominent world experts in that field.