PW1
Improved Life Satisfaction
Personal Wellbeing
Life Satisfaction
Improved Life Satisfaction
Life satisfaction is outlined by the ONS as including feeling that one has purpose, that things in life are worthwhile, feelings of happiness, and levels of anxiety. Improving life satisfaction is a key goal for any intervention related to people. A measure of life satisfaction is considered the closest individual, overall proxy for “wellbeing”. Improvements to someone’s financial circumstances, level of social contact, mental health, and physical health could all change their overall individual assessment of their life satisfaction. However, asking about someone’s own assessment of their life satisfaction allows individuals to share their own perspectives on how they feel they are, and their perspective on their own quality of life. Rather than looking at things that could impact on their overall wellbeing asking about an individual’s life satisfaction directly can allow people the chance to share how they are doing from their own perspective.
Key Value
A monetised social value of £15,300
13000 is the monetised value of a 1 WELLBY change in well-being.
1 WELLBY is an increase in life satisfaction by 1 point on a scale of 0 to 10.
Where does this headline value come from?
Government policy (The Green Book) recommends that Life Satisfaction is expressed as £ monetised wellbeing, using the value of £13,000 for 1 WELLBY, over one year. There are two methods which have been used to calculate this, and this is the mid-point between the two values.
- Equivalent Income – deriving an estimated amount of income that would result in the same change in wellbeing (£16,000).
- QALY Willingness-to-pay (WTP) Value – deriving an estimate of the willingness to pay for a Quality-Adjusted Life Year (QALY) and converting this to a WELLBY. (£10,000).
Adjusted for inflation to 2023 prices is £15,258. Our approach to inflation adjustments is explained on our Methodology page HERE
An overall rounded value of £15,300.
If you’re just starting out, start with Bronze first. The result of a Bronze measurement is just an estimate, but requires the least effort; whereas Silver, Gold and Gold+ give more accurate results but require more effort.
Each level has an effort to accuracy indicator, choose the one that’s right for you.
Bronze
Effort
Accuracy
Monetised value:
Multiply the proportion of your participants you expect to report substantially improved life satisfaction by £15,300
APPLYING THE WELLBY VALUE: Multiply the proportion of your participants you expect to move one point up the life satisfaction scale by £15,300.
If you can’t ask people directly about their life satisfaction, because you’re unable to survey them, or this is a plan for a future project, then you can use this value as a proxy for an improvement in life satisfaction. It’s an estimate of what the impact of an intervention that’s effective at improving life satisfaction (by one point, for one year) might produce.
Here’s an example:
You plan a sports and drama group for young adults. You anticipate 20 people will take part, and you anticipate some (say 13 out of 20) will report improved life satisfaction (It’s important to be realistic about how many of your target group will reach the desired outcome; it’s unlikely all of them will, e.g. 13/20 = 0.65.) Therefore you estimate 0.65*£15,300 = £9,945 value person. Applied to 20 people who started means a total of £9,945*20 = £198,900 monetised social value.
At the bronze level (where you are assuming what the impact might be) your value is likely to overestimate the value of your intervention. So far we’ve talked about a shift by 1 point on the scale. Realistically this sort of shift takes a huge amount of resources. Average life satisfaction scores don’t fluctuate much, in the UK it has fluctuated around approx. 7.6 since 2011. In Jan-Mar 2021 it reached its lowest at 7.3 (ONS). Shifting a smaller amount along the scale is much more realistic.
Silver
Effort
Accuracy
Monetised value:
Monetised social value: Consider realistically what shift you might see in life satisfaction. Therefore you can calculate an estimate of the overall shift, and apply the appropriate WELLBY values.
APPLYING THE WELLBY VALUE: Consider what levels of life satisfaction your participants might realistically be starting with. Then consider what level they might realistically shift to. Whatever shift you consider reasonable, multiply this by the corresponding WELLBY values. Also, consider how many of your participants might see this shift.
A one-point change on the life satisfaction scale is not easy to achieve. This magnitude of change is generally brought about by major changes such as being in good health or having a job. Interventions from well-being programmes are likely to have smaller impacts on life satisfaction. We suggest researching what magnitude of shift your programme might achieve.
Here are some findings from State of Life’s research:
Changes in life satisfaction, based on different factors:
- +0.45 being employed
- +1.0 ‘good’ health as opposed to ‘poor’ health
- +2.0 ‘good’ mental health as opposed to ‘poor’ mental health
- +0.14 weekly attendance at religious services
- +0.16 weekly exercise (walking, swimming or sport)
- +.0.10 weekly volunteering
Here’s an example:
You plan to create a regular craft group for local residents, you anticipate 25 residents will regularly meet at the group, and across the whole group life satisfaction will increase by approx. 0.1 to 0.2.
At the lower estimate, 0.1*£15,300 = £1,530 value per person. Applied to the 25 residents means a total of £38,250 in monetised wellbeing value. At the upper estimate, 0.2*£15,300 = £3,060 value per person. Applied to the 25 residents means a total of £76,500 monetised wellbeing value. It’s important to give a range like this, so it is clear this is an estimate and you are not claiming your monetary value is highly accurate.
Gold
Effort
Accuracy
Monetised value:
At Gold level you are looking to build on your silver estimations by engaging with the person or people affected.
Therefore, at the Gold level, you should survey users about their actual levels of wellbeing rather than using the proxy value.
There are many options for surveying people on their wellbeing.
A good starting point for questions to ask directly through primary research with your stakeholders is the Maximise Your Impact Guide. This guide covers 10 overall impact questions. For Gold level practice you would be looking to understand the question ‘what changes do people experience?’ and ‘how much of each change happened’. Questions you might want to include in your survey to uncover the outcomes they experience could include:
- What changed for you (or happened to you) as a result of our activity or programme?
- Were there any other changes?
- Did these changes lead on to anything else?
- Were the changes all positive?
- Were any of them unexpected?
- What did you want to happen?
- How did your situation/ circumstances affect your experience?
How to measure life satisfaction directly
The ONS4 – the national measures for subjective wellbeing in the UK asks the following 4 questions on a scale of 0 to 10, where 0 is ‘not at all’ and 10 is ‘completely’:
- Overall, how satisfied are you with your life nowadays?
- Overall, to what extent do you feel that the things that you do in your life are worthwhile?
- Overall, how happy did you feel yesterday?
- On a scale where 0 is ‘not at all anxious’ and 10 is ‘completely anxious’, how anxious did you feel yesterday overall?
The top question is the key validated question that needs to be asked to calculate life satisfaction and the associated WELLBYs.
You could also consider other data gathering activities, including direct observation, or focus groups.
Support in developing your Gold survey approach is available through the Measure Up partners, so please do reach out to Impact, State of Life or PRD.
Gold+
Effort
Accuracy
Monetised value:
At the Gold+ level, you are building on your Gold value calculation by assessing the value against the counterfactual, or ‘what would have happened anyway’.
To do this you should identify a control group suitable to assess in line with your intervention, in order to more accurately attribute any changes to your intervention.
For life satisfaction, calculate the average difference in life satisfaction between your control group and your participants, where you can show this change lasts for a year. You might not be able to survey all your participants; if there is a large number of them perhaps you took a sample. The reason we say calculate the average is so that you can calculate the average change for the participants you sampled, and then multiply it by all those who participated in the full program (your sample should be representative.)
You could also consider any other discount or causality elements linked to your activity.
Support in developing your Gold+ counterfactual, causality and discount approach is available through the Measure Up partners, so please do reach out to Impact, State of Life or PRD.
| Value Type: | Master Outcome |
What's this?
This is the type of value. Some values are outcomes, which means many different interventions might lead to them, others are specific interventions that have a set value. |
|---|---|---|
| UN SDG Categories: |
|
What's this?
The UN Sustainable Development Goals are global goals adopted in 2015 for all signed up nations to achieve for us to have a sustainable global future by 2030. There are 17 Goals that address the global challenges we face, including those related to poverty, inequality, climate change, environmental degradation, peace and justice. The Goals are all interconnected, and in order to leave no one behind, it is important that we achieve them all by 2030. |
| PN06/20 Categories: |
|
What's this?
PPN 06/20 Taking account of social value in the award of central government contracts introduced the Central Government Social Value Model in 2020 which all Central Government contracting authorities must use in their in scope procurements. It consists of 5 themes, 8 policy outcomes, and 24 Model Award Criteria which outline key priority areas to achieve more social value. |
MeasureUp empowers you to measure the impact you’re having numerically.
We recommend that numeric reports are backed up with stories and other types of evidence to help illustrate, in human terms, the impact that’s being made on individuals.
We recommend seeing consent from one or more participants in your intervention to collect and tell their stories. This should include a little background on the participant, a summing up of life before the intervention, the human impact of the intervention, and the longer-term (if known) impact on the person’s life outside of and after the intervention.
Providing photographs, audio recordings, video interviews or even artefacts from the intervention (for example, writing, paintings, music, etc, from creative interventions) can add more colour and convey the emotional impact of interventions more directly.
In some cases, it’s appropriate to anonymise or abbreviate the personal information of case study participants. No story should be published or shared without the recorded consent of the individual(s) it concerns. Individuals continue to own the rights to their stories, and if they request you stop sharing the story or making it available online, you should do so promptly and without the need for justification.
Measure Up is an open, collaborative and transparent. If you have any suggestions or feedback on our pragmatic, recommended approach to measuring and valuing social value, including wellbeing, economic, and fiscal impact, and effects on our environment, please get in touch so we can share and discuss this at our next Advisory Group meeting.
We want to empower anyone to perform and improve their impact measurement – without needing a degree in economics.
If you need any more help, or just someone to do the legwork for you we can help signpost you to software, training and consultancy to help you get to grips with the impact you’re having.
