But national-scale, aggregate data are not so helpful when trying to apply them at a smaller scale, to local projects or community programmes. Also, there is a wide array of survey and data collection techniques, and it may be unclear which is best to use.
The underlying problem is that people’s individual well-being is multidimensional, contingent, hard to pin down. This raises an important question: can measures of well-being really help policy-makers to make better, more equitable and sustainable policy decisions that more closely match what people want to happen, at the local level?
In response to this question, social researchers Dr Geoff Kaine and Dr Dean Stronge have tested a different approach to measuring people’s varying preferences and motivations, known as judgement analysis.
An online panel of New Zealanders was asked to identify the three cues they considered most important in judging five aspects of well-being: green space, water quality, social connectedness, cultural identity and governance. These cues were then used in a second online questionnaire asking about people’s preferences and judgements in various scenarios relating to those five well- being measures. Just over 1,000 people completed the tasks. Results were mapped as lens diagrams, in which the relative importance of factors such as closeness to family and friends and membership of clubs were shown as a function of social connection, which were then combined to give an overall well-being score.
As an example, judgement analysis was able to differentiate between people depending on how their well-being was influenced by the characteristics of green spaces (parks and reserves). For some people their well-being depended on the degree of biodiversity in those spaces. So, these people would be happier with fewer, larger more biodiverse parks even if the parks are relatively distant. For others, their well-being depended on how easily they could access green spaces and how well maintained they were as well as the degree of biodiversity in those spaces. These people, then, would be happier with closer, smaller and less biodiverse parks.
The researchers conclude that the judgment analysis method has good potential at the local scale to quantify differences in how people think about their well-being. The lens diagrams, in particular, were good at making this diversity of perspectives explicit.