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Analysing and modelling wellbeing:
psychological, bodily, social, and
environmental dimensions
Neil Thin
School of Social and Political Science
University of Edinburgh
Main messages
• Wellbeing is ineffable: statistical reports don’t make the
uncertainties disappear.
• With or without stats, the ‘wellbeing’ rubric helpfully tilts
policy conversations towards positivity and ultimate
values
• The ‘happiness lens’ adds: empathy; holism; and
narrativity - but only if we transcend numerical
reductionism.
• It also helps to consider implicit and explicit models,
visualizations, and analytical frameworks.
First, three famous Scots to bear in mind…
Francis
Hutcheson
1694-1746
What matters is
‘the greatest
happiness for
the greatest
numbers’
John Sinclair
(1754-1835)
Coined the term
‘statistics’;
governments
should assess
the ‘quantum of
happiness’
Samuel
Smiles
(1812-1904)
Sparked the
mass-market
‘self-help’
movement
Wellbeing policy as a drive towards positivity
Positive psychology
Positive sociology/
Positive organizational
scholarship
Personal wellbeing
Social Quality
Positive business ethics,
positive organizational
behaviour
Positive social planning
and facilitation
Where does wellbeing occur? Where are the causes?
Where can/should policies make a difference?
Physical
environment
Society
Body
Mind
Commissioned by UK DFID and World Bank
for UN conference on Sustainable
Development, Johannesburg 2002
Fights back against pathologism and
residualism in social monitoring
Positive social qualities: justice, solidarity,
participation, security
Policy Press, Bristol
Part One: Introductory overview and critique of
happiness in policy discourse and research
Part Two explores actual and potential
applications of “happiness” in various policy
domains: intimacy; parenting; schooling; gender
reform; old age; workplace; business.
A dynamic and interpretive AIEOU
model of happiness
Interpretation
Anticipation
Experience
Unpleasantness
Outcomes
Key features of the “happiness lens”
Transparency
Lifespan
perspective
Positivity
Empathy
Holism
Wellbeing assessment takes us ‘beyond
GDP’ and ‘beyond profit’.
Good, but what if pathological
numerophilia is the problem?
Why is measurement neurosis
dangerous?
• ‘Statistics’ has been reduced to numerical data; this
is bad science
• What matters is what matters (forget ‘what can’t be
counted doesn’t count’).
• Happiness and social progress are elusive and uncertain:
we need mixed learning methods, because numerical
proxies are distortive.
Another warning about stats:
• Subjective ‘data’ aren’t just ‘given’ facts: they might be
better termed ‘elicitata’
• To interpret any human-response survey, we need to know
about the context and process of elicitation
• E.g. how did Oxfam Scotland end up weighting ‘feeling good’ selfreports as the least important evidence of wellbeing? (weighted less
than one-fifth of the importance of housing satisfaction! One-third of
the importance of money?)
Positive Social Planning
• Beyond GDP, beyond measurement (avoid economism
and statistical reductionism, promote robust qualitative
assessment)
• Be assertively positive about social goods
• Develop analytical tools, concepts, and approaches
for envisioning and planning really good societies
Four SQ domains (Thin, 2002)
• social justice (equal opportunity, fair and transparent
rewards, procedural justice, rights and duties)
• solidarity (cohesion, empathy, co-operation, and associational
life)
• participation (opportunities for meaningful engagement)
• security (job security, physical safety, trust in colleagues and
management)
models and visual metaphors of
personal and social value
A 20 x 20 Pecha Kucha show
‘Three pillars’ model of sustainable development
Wellbeing Wales: a ‘wellbeing’ variant of the 3 pillars SD model
Example of a confusing attempt to use the three pillars
Sustainable Livelihoods Framework
Gough and McGregor wellbeing framework, 2007:337
Sarah White et al, 2011: a model for wellbeing analysis
Bhutan’s Gross National Happiness assessment
ENIQ Social Quality model
Social Model of Health – Dahlgren & Whitehead (1991)
Urie
Bronfenbrenner’s
systems model of
development
Bronfenbrenner, Urie (1979) The
Ecology of Human Development:
Experiments by Nature and
Design. Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press
Maslow’s ‘hierarchy of needs’ diagram
Urie Bronfenbrenner. (1979). The Ecology of Human Development. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press
.
Body-mind-spirit-heart (another common source of confusion)
Domains of Wellbeing (Williams and Robinson, 2006:100
NEF (2011) Model of well-being
Sonja Lyubomirsky’s happiness pie
Table: the happiness lens in various policy domains
National
Business
Health
governance
Ultimate
positive values
Subjectivit y
(empathi c
respect for
feelings and
evaluations)
Holism (interdomain
inte ractions)
Life narratives
Education
from GDP to
wellbeing; from
expenditures and
activities to outcomes
from so cial harms to
social goods
Citizen happiness
beyond profit to workplace
social quality, and worker
and customer wellbeing
from harm avoidance to
social value
From illness and
medication to positive
health promotion
From academic
performanc e to pupil
wellbeing and positive life
outcomes
Worker and customer
happiness
Subjective health
Pupil and teacher
happiness
Looking for pos itive
synergies between
domains and key actors
Work-life harmo nizing
Education for what?
Using life course data
and narratives to learn
about cross-temporal
wellbeing
Linking p resent
worker/customer
wellbeing with past and
future
Healthy for what?
Interactions between
health, activities,
education, environment
Lif ecourse approaches to
health promotion
Lif elong learning,
transferable skills
Suggested matrix for analysing social goods
Justice
Mental (Intrapersonal)
Inter-personal
(relationship
quality)
Organizational
(communal
quality)
Societal/
Global
(social quality)
Solidarity
Participation
Security