Well-being Explained for IEEE P7010

Your

presenters:

Laura Musikanski, JD, MBA

Happiness Alliance

happycounts.org

Working with researchers,

communities, governments since

2011

A bit about terminology:Quality of Life - Researchers

Happiness – Bhutan’s Gross National Happiness, Great Britain ONS

Beyond GDP – EU’s BRAINPOoL Project

Well-being – Health and Private Sector, OECD

Takeaways:

Early days - no consensus on terminology

Generally, there is agreement on the broadness of scope

Use the term that fits the circumstances

Caveat: avoid the tendency to narrowly define

A few words on objective v. subjective measurements:

Takeaway: It’s not either or, it’s andBalanced picture requires both

Objective:Observable Measurablei.e. life expectancy

Subjective:Surveys Best way to understand satisfaction with life, happiness is to ask

categoriesof well-being metrics

Positive psychology

Government sector

Business sector

Crowdsourced

Positive psychology

Human Needs

Surveys

satisfaction with lifepositive and negative emotion (affect) autonomyenvironmental masterypersonal growthpositive relationships with otherspurpose in lifepresence and search for meaning.self-acceptanceengagementrelationshipsmeaningaccomplishmentphysical healthetc.

Government sector

Objective

Subjective

Composites

Index v. Dashboard

Objective component index used by UN

Objective index supported based on indicators in use by some governments (Finland, Maryland…)

Genuine Progress IndicatorStart with Gross Domestic Product, make adjustments for:

Objective goals measured by UN

Subjective dashboard used in World Happiness Repord, OECD, & many institutions

Gallup World Poll

United Kingdom’s ONS subjective & objective indicators

Government of Bhutan’s Gross National Happiness

Business sector

Objective indicators used by business for sustainability reporting

Global Reporting Initiative reporting areas:

Objective indicators used by business for sustainability reporting

Crowdsourced

Mappiness App – Research Social Media Project

Positive emotion app for research

Satisfaction with services used by government of Dubai

Recap

Well-being is broadly defined.

A person’s well-being changes based on circumstances and needs.

If you want to know how somebody is doing, ask them i.e. surveys (subjective metrics) are at

least as important as objective metrics.

Learn more

IEEE Well-being Committee’s State of Wellbeing Metrics (a primer) https://docs.google.com/document/d/1qxSKg7lnsYyRO9P2btAI4mVWe_4ZnvDup6yQFggkYw8/edit#heading=h.gjdgxs

Measuring Happiness to Guide Public Policy Making: A Survey of Instruments and Policy Initiativeshttp://scholarworks.waldenu.edu/jsc/vol7/iss1/3/

L. Musikanski [email protected]