Okay, I actually dug up the paper. Last time I tried to find out about this I just used Google instead of my university's research venue. Duh. Guess this is one of those instances where trivial amounts of effort/thought make a difference.

It turns out they just asked about overall life satisfaction, and then how they rated their satisfaction with various aspects of their life (job opportunities, academic prospects, social life, winter weather, summer weather). So I am indeed still somewhat skeptical of this result and would be more swayed by a DRM-style experiment...

If you haven't read Kahneman's "Thinking, Fast and Slow", I highly recommend it for the sections on different types of happiness. He is the one who did a lot of the original research on this, and the book explains it very well. (Doesn't note the methodology used in the California study, though.)