HE1.1
Increased Physical Activity
Physical Health
Health
Increased Physical Activity
By increased physical activity we are talking about a wide range of activities that lead to increasing a person’s overall physical movement throughout their week.
This could include formal sporting activities such as football, netball, hockey, or rugby; or exercise such as going to the gym, running, swimming, or exercise classes. It could also include walking or activities such as gardening, cleaning the house or DIY.
Key Value
A monetised social value of £3,400
This is the monetised value of 1 person ‘walking, swimming or doing sport’ once a week, for 1 year.
There are existing values relating to different frequencies of physical activity, and there are validated (tried and tested) ways to most accurately ask about these.
The values are guided by government policy (The Green Book) and sophisticated research into the relationship between physical activity and wellbeing (measured by life satisfaction.) The Green Book recommends that life satisfaction is expressed as £ monetised wellbeing, using the value of £13,000 for 1 WELLBY, over one year (see section on life satisfaction.)
Research using national datasets can estimate the isolated impact of a change in physical health on life satisfaction, after accounting for important controls such as age, health, socio-economics and other demographics. This research has been done by State of Life (The WELLBY Value Guide), which found that even after accounting for all these other factors, compared to someone who ‘never / almost never’ does physical activity, someone who does this ‘at least once a week’ is associated with an increase in life satisfaction by 0.22500 (Table 2 in the above link). Therefore this change in physical activity is worth 0.22500 WELLBYs, or 0.22500*£13,000 = £2,925 (rounded to £3,000).
Adjusted value for inflation to 2023 prices is £3,433 . Our approach to inflation adjustments is explained on our Methodology page HERE
A rounded value of £3,400.
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:
Monetised social value: Multiply the proportion of your participants you expect to do weekly physical activity by £3,400
APPLYING THE WELLBY VALUE: Consider the proportion of your participants you expect to do weekly physical activity. Multiply this by £3,400 to obtain a value per person.
If you can’t ask people directly about their physical activity, 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 increased frequency of physical activity. It’s an estimate of what the impact of an intervention that’s effective at increasing physical activity from nothing to weekly might produce.
Here’s an example
You plan a programme which supports inactive people to take part in a walking group once a week. You anticipate 20 people will take part, and you anticipate some (say 16 out of 20) will continue taking part for a reasonable amount of time. (It’s important to be realistic about how many of your target group will continue with the programme; it’s unlikely all of them will, e.g 16/20 = 0.8). Therefore you estimate 0.8*£3,400 = £2,720 value person. Applied to the 20 people who started means a total of £2,720*20 = £54,400 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. We’ve only introduced the value of shifting from nothing to weekly exercise’. Realistically this is a big shift for a person who is inactive, and might take a lot of resources. Shifting between other categories has different values.
Silver
Effort
Accuracy
Monetised value:
Monetised social value: Consider what frequencies of physical activity you might shift people from and to. Therefore you can calculate an estimate of the overall shift, by applying the appropriate WELLBY values.
APPLYING THE WELLBY VALUE: Consider what categories your participants might realistically be starting in. Then consider what categories they might realistically shift to. Calculate the difference, which will give you a net change in each category. Multiply these net changes by the corresponding WELLBY values. These can be added up to obtain a total value per person. You can then apply this figure per person to the total number of people it applies to.
This table outlines the WELLBY value which will be applied. They all come from The WELLBY Value Guide (Table 2) by State of Life and use data from Understanding Society and the British Household Panel Survey. The coefficients indicate the difference in life satisfaction associated with being in each category. ‘Never / almost never’ is the base group which others are compared to, hence why the coefficient and the value are both 0. Values for the other categories are all compared to the ‘never / almost never’ group.
| Coefficient on Life Satisfaction | WELLBY VALUE (coefficient *£13,000 in 2019 prices) | WELLBY VALUE (in 2023 prices and rounded) | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Never/almost never | 0.000 | £0 | 0 |
| Once a year or less | 0.023 | £300 | 350 |
| Several times a year | 0.143 | £2,000 | 2,200 |
| At least once a month | 0.157 | £2,000 | 2,400 |
| At least once a week | 0.225 | £3,000 | 3,400 |
The coefficient on ‘once a year or less’ isn’t significant.
Here’s an example
You run a programme which supports inactive people to take part in a walking group once a week. Realistically some not all participants are completely inactive to start with. You estimate half your participants are never active, but half are active several times a year. You anticipate 20 people will take part, and you anticipate some (say 8 out of 20) will continue taking part every week for a reasonable amount of time. The rest will come intermittently, and some might not continue at all. You’re not sure of this split, so you estimate half in the remaining two groups.
Next you calculate the shift in each category (below). There is a shift in the ‘Several times a year/ at least once a month’ category of -20% (-20% * £2,400 = -£480). This is outweighed by the shift in the ‘At least once a week’ group (+40%*£3,400 = £1,360). Summing the values gives £880 social value per person. This can be multiplied by the number of people who take part in the exercise group.(£880*20 = £17,600)
| Pre-intervention (Estimated %) | Post-intervention (Estimated %) | Change (I-C) | Value (to be applied) | Value of change | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Never/almost never / once a year or less | 50% | 30% | -20% | 0 | £0 |
| Several times a year/ at least once a month | 50% | 30% | -20% | £2,400 | -£480 |
| At least once a week | 0% | 40% | 40% | £3,400 | £1,360 |
| Total value (per person): | £880 | ||||
| Total value of programme: | £17,600 |
Gold
Effort
Accuracy
Monetised value:
Monetised value: Measure actual amounts of difference that increased physical activity makes to people’s lives.
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?
A starting point for questions related to wellbeing is to look at the What Works Centre for Wellbeing website: https://whatworkswellbeing.org/about-wellbeing/how-to-measure-wellbeing/ .
As you start to measure wellbeing directly from the people affected, one set of questions it is important to consider is the ONS4 – the national measures for subjective wellbeing in the UK which 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?
You could also consider other data gathering activities, including direct observation, or focus groups.
How is physical activity measured?
The WELLBY values were calculated using British Household Panel Survey (1991 – 2008) data, and a validated (tried and tested) question in this survey. To apply these WELLBY values you should use the same question, and ask it in the same way.The question should be asked in exactly this way:
“How frequently do you play sport, walk or go swimming?..” [Never/almost never / once a year or less, once a year or less, Several times a year, at least once a month, at least once a week]
Note on the answer options: Although we have merged some categories in order to apply WELLBY values, the question should still be asked with ALL of these possible answer options. The question is only free from bias in EXACTLY the format it is asked in these national surveys.
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.
You could also consider any other discount or causality elements linked to your job creation 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: | 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: |
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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: |
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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. |
Evidence
Measure Up focuses on empowering you to numerically measure the impact you’re having. 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 seeking consent from participants in your intervention to collect and tell their story. 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 from creative interventions) can add more to the story, 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 need for justification.
Feedback
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.
More help
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 and value you are creating.
