Personal well-being user guidance

About this article

Contents:

1. Personal well-being overview
2. Our personal well-being questions
3. Guidance for including our personal well-being questions in surveys
4. Personal well-being guidance and methodology
5. Personal well-being data and publications
6. Glossary
7. Strengths and limitations
8. Personal well-being additional guidance
9. Personal well-being outputs and user feedback
10. Related links
11. Cite this methodology

1. Personal well-being overview

The personal well-being user guide should be used alongside the personal well-being harmonised standard to inform data producers of best practice for including personal well-being in survey data collection. It will also help analysts to interpret reporting of the measures. Please see our personal well-being frequently asked questions (FAQs) and Quality and Methodology Information (QMI) pages for further guidance.

Personal well-being (PWB) is part of our wider UK Measures of National Well-being (MNW) programme, which aims to provide accepted and trusted measures of the nation's well-being. The UK MNW work is part of an initiative, both in the UK and internationally, to look beyond traditional headline economic figures to evaluate national progress holistically. In the UK we consider how we are doing as individuals, as communities and as a nation, and how sustainable this is for the future. The measures include both standard objective measures, such as income and health, and subjective measures asking people's own views about their lives to evaluate individual well-being.

We assess personal well-being using four measures (often referred to as the ONS4). The ONS4 measures ask people to evaluate three aspects of their own well-being:

• how satisfied they are with their lives overall

• whether they feel they have meaning and purpose in their lives

• their emotions during a particular period (both positive and negative)

These questions capture three types of well-being: evaluative, eudemonic, and affective experience. Please see Section 6: Glossary, for more information about these terms.

One of the main benefits of collecting information on personal well-being is that it is based on people's views of their own individual well-being. In the past, assumptions were made about how objective conditions, such as people's health and income, might influence their individual well-being. Personal well-being measures, on the other hand, take account of what matters to people by allowing them to decide what is important when they respond to questions.

Personal well-being measures can be used in various ways to inform effective decisions in policy making. For example, analysis can be carried out to look at how different objective domains relate to personal well-being and which have the biggest effect on personal well-being. This can help in identifying which policy measures could improve personal well-being most effectively.

Another use is in cost-benefit analysis in the policy appraisal process, which could help inform decisions around which forms of spending will lead to the largest increases in personal well-being, as explored in the Centre for Economic Performance's Measuring Subjective Wellbeing 2011 paper (PDF, 97KB). The Green Book is HM Treasury's guide for government departments on the appraisal of the costs and benefits of projects through social cost-benefit analysis. There is now Green Book supplementary guidance on well-being, "which outlines how and where well-being should be considered in the relevant parts of the Green Book methodology, with an overview of the key findings from the current wellbeing literature."

Looking at policies through a "well-being lens" and using data to inform not only the formulation of policy but also how policy could be better implemented with people's well-being in mind, is an important use. Evaluation and monitoring of policy could also benefit from using personal well-being information.

Measuring personal well-being is not a new approach. Various international surveys have collected this type of information globally over the last few decades. What is new, is that there is increasing international recognition that this should be included in official data collection.

The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) published guidance on the measurement of subjective well-being in 2013 to improve the harmonisation of data collection for national statistics offices around the world. Our personal well-being questions are aligned with this international agenda for measuring subjective well-being, allowing comparisons to be drawn between the personal well-being of people in the UK and in other countries.

Monitoring personal well-being across the nation year on year will help to show how people feel their quality of life changes in relation to changes in circumstances, policies and wider events in society.

2. Our personal well-being questions

We use four survey questions (known as the ONS4) to measure personal well-being. Individuals are asked to respond to the questions on a scale of 0 to 10. These questions represent a harmonised standard for measuring personal well-being, and therefore are used in many surveys across the UK. The harmonised standard guidance contains information about the other surveys that include some or all of our personal well-being questions, please see Personal wellbeing harmonised standard on the Government Analysis Function website.

Participants were introduced to the part of the survey that assesses the ONS4 with the following text:

"Next, I would like to ask you four questions about your feelings on aspects of your life. There are no right or wrong answers. For each of these questions I'd like you to give an answer on a scale of 0 to 10, where 0 is "not at all" and 10 is "completely"".

They were then asked to respond to a series of questions relating to the ONS4 measures.

Life satisfaction

Overall, how satisfied are you with your life nowadays, where 0 is "not at all satisfied" and 10 is "completely satisfied"?

Worthwhile

Overall, to what extent do you feel that the things you do in your life are worthwhile, where 0 is "not at all worthwhile" and 10 is "completely worthwhile"?

Happiness

Overall, how happy did you feel yesterday, where 0 is "not at all happy" and 10 is "completely happy"?

Anxiety

On a scale where 0 is "not at all anxious" and 10 is "completely anxious", overall, how anxious did you feel yesterday?

We first added these four questions to the Annual Population Survey (APS) in April 2011. The questions have been tested extensively both on the Opinions and Lifestyle Survey (OPN) and using cognitive testing methods. Results from OPN Survey testing are available in our Investigation of subjective well-being data from the ONS OPN report. The ONS4 well-being questions are now regularly included in the Opinions and Lifestyles survey (OPN), and well-being estimates are produced from it on a fortnightly basis. See our Public opinions and social trends personal well-being and loneliness dataset.

For the complete questionnaire documentation please refer to our Labour Force Survey - user guidance.

3. Guidance for including our personal well-being questions in surveys

Before April 2011, we carried out small-scale cognitive testing of our four personal well-being questions (ONS4) in the Integrated Household Survey (IHS), to ensure the questions are used in an appropriate way.

Findings from ONS4 testing

Placement of the questions on the APS

Responses to evaluative questions can be determined in part by the context of the interview. For example, placing after questions relating to health or the labour market may affect the answers that respondents make.

Based on findings from the cognitive testing, it was decided that the placement of the overall monitoring questions would be early in the questionnaire, directly after the core questions on household and individual demographics.

This allows time for rapport to be built up between the interviewer and the respondent by the time the personal well-being questions are asked without allowing later questions, such as those on employment, to influence response to the personal well-being questions.

Question order

The importance of the ordering of the personal well-being questions also needs to be taken into consideration when designing personal well-being question modules. Any changes year-to-year could affect the ability to examine changes in personal well-being over time, as some of the observed change could be because of ordering effects.

Currently, within the APS, the question on life satisfaction is followed by the worthwhile question, which is then followed by the happiness yesterday and the anxious yesterday questions. This order has not changed on the APS since the questions were introduced in April 2011. This is also the order of the questions asked in the OPN.

Question wording

For any survey question, the wording can influence the answer that is received from respondents. Personal well-being questions are no exception. It is not only response scales that differ from survey to survey but also question wording, including the use of time frames.

We have carried out testing on the effect of the change in question wording including the inclusion of "even if yesterday was not a typical day" for happiness and the effect of moving from "nowadays" to "these days" for the question on life satisfaction. For more information on this testing, please see our Summary of results from testing of experimental subjective personal well-being questions - December 2012 (PDF, 519KB).

Question scales

We decided that an 11-point scale from 0 to 10, where 0 is "not at all" and 10 is "completely", should be used for all the APS personal well-being questions. The reason for this decision was to ensure that the scales between the questions are consistent to help respondents answer the questions more easily and to aid analysis across the separate questions.

Further to this, 11-point scales of this nature are commonly used across other surveys of interest, particularly internationally and using the same type of scale aids comparisons with these estimates. An 11-point scale also allows for finer distinctions than a smaller (7-point) scale, but not so many points that would make it difficult for respondents to select one value over another.

Mode of interview

Testing has also shown that people respond more positively to the personal well-being questions when interviewed by telephone rather than face-to-face. Because of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, from March 2020, people were interviewed solely by telephone. Our Data collection changes due to the pandemic and their impact on estimating personal well-being methodology article gives further information on this.

During the coronavirus pandemic, we at the Office for National Statistics (ONS) also began measuring personal well-being fortnightly in the Opinions and Lifestyle Survey (OPN), and publishing these fortnightly in our Public opinions and social trends, Great Britain bulletin. There was a difference in the scores of the personal well-being questions between the APS and OPN, with respondents scoring higher in the APS. This may be on account of methodology, with the APS asking respondents the well-being questions through telephone interviews and the OPN asking respondents through online self-completion. Users should bear these differences in mind when comparing results from the OPN and APS. More information on the differences between the APS and OPN personal well-being estimates can be found in our Data collection changes because of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic and their impact on estimating personal well-being article.

Our regression analysis, Measuring national well-being - what matters most to personal well-being explores how data collection method can affect results. The most recent regression analysis presented in our Personal well-being in the UK: April 2022 to March 2023 bulletin did not include mode of a collection as a variable, as very few respondents have been interviewed by telephone since March 2020. Table 1 shows the split between face-to-face and telephone interviewing for those responding to the ONS4 personal well-being questions on the APS over the period we have captured personal well-being.

The ONS4 personal well-being questions are asked across several surveys that are internal and external to the organisation. Although the same questions are asked, the results of each of the surveys may not be comparable because of the sampling frame, sampling method and placement. For a full list of surveys that use the ONS4, please see the harmonised standard, published on the Government Analysis Function website.

4. Personal well-being guidance and methodology

Personal well-being is presented as both average means and thresholds. Thresholds present the proportion responding in defined response categories. Cognitive testing was undertaken to understand how respondents chose their score on the 11-point scale and what they considered to be "high", "low" and "average" ratings of personal well-being. These discussions are outlined in our Overview of ONS phase three cognitive testing of subjective well-being questions (PDF, 328KB). Personal well-being thresholds for "life satisfaction", "worthwhile", and "happiness" are rated as:

• low - 0 to 4

• medium - 5 to 6

• high - 7 to 8

• very high - 9 to 10

Well-being thresholds for "anxiety" are rated as:

• very low - 0 to 1

• low - 2 to 3

• medium - 4 to 5

• high - 6 to 10

The Annual Population Survey (APS) is a continuous household survey covering the UK (excluding those in communal establishments). Its aim is to provide estimates between censuses of important social and labour market variables at a local-area level. The APS is not a stand-alone survey, but uses data combined from two waves of the main Labour Force Survey (LFS) with data collected on a local sample boost.

The APS datasets are weighted to reflect the size and composition of the general population, by using the most up-to-date official population data. Weighting factors take account of the design of the survey (which does not include communal establishments) and the composition of the local population by age and sex. The APS datasets are reweighted historically every two years to use more up-to-date mid-year population estimates and subnational projection estimates.

For further information, please see our Personal well-being in the UK Quality and Methodology Information (QMI) report.

Supporting information on methodological aspects on the APS can be found in our APS QMI report.

5. Data and publications and personal well-being

Personal well-being data from the Annual Population Survey (APS) are available on both one-year and three-year datasets:

• the one-year datasets are published quarterly based on the previous year's data; the first one-year dataset covered the financial year ending 2012

• the three-year datasets were originally produced on a financial-year basis (April 2011 to March 2014 and April 2012 to March 2015); however, these are now published on a calendar-year basis, the first one being January 2013 to December 2015

Since July 2016, personal well-being datasets are no longer included in a separate personal well-being APS dataset but in the main APS dataset release, allowing for analysis by more topic areas.

The quarterly estimates are badged as official statistics and are published as a dataset-only release, they are available from Quarter 2 (April to June) 2011 by UK country, English region, age, and sex. These data tables are in three locations:

• our Quarterly personal well-being estimates - non-seasonally adjusted dataset

• our Quality of information for quarterly personal well-being estimates dataset

• our Quarterly personal well-being estimates - seasonally adjusted dataset

The estimates published in our Personal well-being in the UK bulletin series are badged as accredited official statistics (previously called National Statistics). The annual estimates of personal well-being are presented for the UK, by country, region, country, unitary and local authority from April 2011 to March 2012. Individual characteristics and circumstances are also reported annually from April 2022 to March 2023. To see these findings, please refer to:

• our Personal well-being in the UK annual bulletin series

• our Annual personal well-being in the UK estimates dataset

• our Quality of information for annual personal well-being estimates dataset

For more timely estimates of personal well-being, our fortnightly Public opinions and social trends, Great Britain bulletin release includes well-being in its accompanying datasets with data from March 2020.

For more details on related releases, our release calendar provides advance notice of release dates. In the unlikely event of a change to the pre-announced release schedule, public attention will be drawn to the change within the 28 days prior to publication, and the reasons for the change will be explained fully at the same time, as set out in the Code of Practice for Statistics.

The most recent publications can be found on our well-being homepage.

6. Glossary

Domain

The UK Measures of National Well-being (UK MNW) framework is comprised of 10 domains. Please note that we use the terms "domain" and "topic area" interchangeably in our publications. The domains provide a structure to measure national well-being. They reflect what is important to national well-being in a comprehensive and mutually exclusive way.

Evaluative

The "evaluative" approach asks individuals to reflect on their life and make a cognitive assessment of how their life is going overall, or on certain aspects of their life. "Overall, how satisfied are you with your life nowadays?" is the evaluative question included on the APS.

Eudemonic

The "eudemonic" approach is sometimes referred to as the psychological or functioning and flourishing approach, which draws on self-determination theory and tends to measure such things as people's sense of meaning and purpose in life, connections with family and friends, a sense of control and whether they feel part of something bigger than themselves. "Overall, to what extent do you feel the things you do in your life are worthwhile?" is the eudemonic question included on the APS.

Experience

The "experience" approach measures people's positive and negative experiences (or effect) over a short timeframe to capture people's personal well-being on a day-to-day basis. The APS includes both positive ("Overall, how happy did you feel yesterday?") and negative ("Overall, how anxious did you feel yesterday?") effect questions.

Individual well-being

Personal well-being is based on people's views of their own individual well-being. Personal well-being measures are grounded in individuals' preferences and take account of what matters to people by allowing them to decide what is important when they respond to questions.

Thresholds

Thresholds are used in the report to present dispersion in the data. These show the proportion of responses that fall between certain ratings on the 0 to 10 scale. The thresholds are divided into four categories, as set out in Section 4: Personal well-being guidance and methodology.

7. Strengths and limitations

For more information on the strengths and limitations of personal well-being statistics, please see our Personal well-being in the UK Quality and Methodology Information (QMI) report.

8. Personal well-being additional guidance

For more information on personal well-being, please see our frequently asked questions (FAQs) and our Personal well-being in the UK Quality and Methodology Information (QMI) report, which are updated as required.

9. Personal well-being outputs and user feedback

We always aim to enhance the quality of the personal well-being outputs and consider different analysis to better meet user needs.

We have been using various groups and ways to engage with users of personal well-being data, including consultations and user feedback on content, format and presentation of personal well-being results following releases.

If you would like to provide feedback about well-being outputs, please contact us at QualityOfLife@ons.gov.uk.

10. Related links

11. Cite this methodology