Exercise and physical fitness is positively linked to wellbeing
“IS NATIONAL WELLBEING SIMPLY THE
TOTALITY OF INDIVIDUAL WELLBEING OR IS THERE MORE TO IT THAN THAT?”
These people would say there are some things about the kind of society we live in – like its tolerance or diversity or its civic functions – which individuals will be aware of and reflect on, but won’t necessarily take into account when answering questions about how satis- fied they are with their lives.”
THE FUTURE
At the end of the consultation, Allin hopes the ONS will have “a clearer understanding of the key aspects of this thing called national wellbeing.” From April, around 200,000 people will be asked to rate their life satis- faction on a scale of 0 to 10 as part of the project. Four questions are being added to the ONS’s Integrated Household Survey – the UK’s biggest
ISSUE 2 2011 © cybertrek 2011
household survey – to measure what people think and feel about their own wellbeing. The first annual experimen- tal estimates, based on the replies, are planned for summer 2012. However, people’s subjective analy- sis of their own wellbeing is just one of the components that will make up the final statistics, says Allin. The idea is to publish information – which will comprise subjective viewpoints along- side more objective statistics – which can be used to monitor the progress of the UK in a number of ways. “Our starting point is that we’re not aiming for a single number, but maybe a dashboard of numbers,” says Allin. “When you’re driving a car, you need
to keep an eye on various things: how fast you’re going, how much fuel
you’ve got left, whether any warning lights have come on. “In terms of what progress we’re making as a society, are there half a dozen or so things we might want to pull together and look at regularly to check on the state of the UK and see how it is changing?” The longer-term aim is for interna- tional comparibility, and Allin says there’s strong co-operation on this.
“We already have comparability for economic performance and unemploy- ment figures so why not wellbeing? The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development is working on a project to produce a handbook for sub- jective wellbeing measures. Hopefully we can influence those if we think the questions work particularly well.” l
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