Satellite Meeting

Enhancing societal progress needs timely and reliable data that allow policy makers and the public at large to understand and interpret the dynamics of social change. While this task has traditionally relied on objective measures, subjective measures of people’s attitudes, experiences and feelings are playing an increasingly important role in recent discussions among economists, psychologists and policy makers. These discussions have highlighted the potential of subjective measures to inform about both the level of quality of life (i.e. how it compares across countries and evolves over time) and its underlying determinants.

The idea that people’s reports of their own experiences could be part of the toolkit used by statisticians and policy analysts for assessing societal progress would have appeared far-fetched only a few years ago. Today, however, it is considered more positively, thanks to the extensive research work done on available data. Indeed many “subjective” measures are already widely used by policy-makers and collected by several National statistical offices because they offer information that objective measures cannot: examples include businesses’ and consumers’ confidence, self-assessed health status and the fear of crime. In conclusion, there is a growing consensus that measuring societal progress and quality of life requires a combination of objective and subjective measures for a large range of economic, social and environmental phenomena.

The issue is being addressed by the Commission on the “Measurement of economic performance and social progress” established by the French President Sarkozy and chaired by Prof. J. Stiglitz. In particular, one of the working groups is analysing new measures of quality of life, including subjective ones (the report of the Commission is scheduled to be published after the summer). The OECD is also working on the relevance of subjective measures of well-being for policy making, in the context of a joint project with the European Commission.

National statistical offices play a key role in the measurement of a large range of dimensions of quality of life, and these measures rely on a range of statistical sources (e.g. administrative files, survey data). Indeed, some of these dimensions (e.g. unemployment, poverty, inequalities) are routinely measured through self-reports of people on their living conditions and behaviours. Various public administrations also rely on surveys of their own staff and of users of the services that they provide to assess how best to respond to the assessment and expectations of workers and clients. However, some National statistical offices have played only a limited role in the collection of subjective data concerning people’s attitudes, values and expectations, while others have taken a much more proactive attitude, introducing questions about feelings and evaluations in their on-going surveys. Indeed, the main surveys measuring subjective well-being and comparing countries’ performance in this field are undertaken by commercial (e.g. the Gallup World Poll) and academic providers (e.g. the World Values Survey).

Against this background, this meeting aims to discuss the role that National statistical offices could play, alongside other actors, in collecting more robust information on different aspects of subjective well-being and the factors shaping it. This workshop is organised in the context of the Global Project on “Measuring the Progress of Societies” as a satellite meeting to the conference of the International Society for Quality of Life Studies on “Measures and goals for the progress of societies”. It will gather together producers and users of subjective well-being data, as well as representatives from National statistical offices and international organisations. Its aims are to:

raise awareness within the statistical community on the importance of subjective well-being measures, as demonstrated by the existing experiences in National statistical offices and in other institutions;
identify the best approaches for reliably measuring subjective well-being and to assess the scope for including suitable questions in regular surveys;
evaluate possible future steps, including the possibility of developing a handbook on the measurement of subjective well-being.

Participants to the workshop are invited to prepare information notes describing the state of play in SWB measures in their country.

SATELLITE MEETING - July 23-24
Measuring subjective well-being: an opportunity for National Statistical Offices?
Sponsored by
	ISQOLS
Background and goals Enhancing societal progress needs timely and reliable data that allow policy makers and the public at large to understand and interpret the dynamics of social change. While this task has traditionally relied on objective measures, subjective measures of people’s attitudes, experiences and feelings are playing an increasingly important role in recent discussions among economists, psychologists and policy makers. These discussions have highlighted the potential of subjective measures to inform about both the level of quality of life (i.e. how it compares across countries and evolves over time) and its underlying determinants. The idea that people’s reports of their own experiences could be part of the toolkit used by statisticians and policy analysts for assessing societal progress would have appeared far-fetched only a few years ago. Today, however, it is considered more positively, thanks to the extensive research work done on available data. Indeed many “subjective” measures are already widely used by policy-makers and collected by several National statistical offices because they offer information that objective measures cannot: examples include businesses’ and consumers’ confidence, self-assessed health status and the fear of crime. In conclusion, there is a growing consensus that measuring societal progress and quality of life requires a combination of objective and subjective measures for a large range of economic, social and environmental phenomena. The issue is being addressed by the Commission on the “Measurement of economic performance and social progress” established by the French President Sarkozy and chaired by Prof. J. Stiglitz. In particular, one of the working groups is analysing new measures of quality of life, including subjective ones (the report of the Commission is scheduled to be published after the summer). The OECD is also working on the relevance of subjective measures of well-being for policy making, in the context of a joint project with the European Commission. National statistical offices play a key role in the measurement of a large range of dimensions of quality of life, and these measures rely on a range of statistical sources (e.g. administrative files, survey data). Indeed, some of these dimensions (e.g. unemployment, poverty, inequalities) are routinely measured through self-reports of people on their living conditions and behaviours. Various public administrations also rely on surveys of their own staff and of users of the services that they provide to assess how best to respond to the assessment and expectations of workers and clients. However, some National statistical offices have played only a limited role in the collection of subjective data concerning people’s attitudes, values and expectations, while others have taken a much more proactive attitude, introducing questions about feelings and evaluations in their on-going surveys. Indeed, the main surveys measuring subjective well-being and comparing countries’ performance in this field are undertaken by commercial (e.g. the Gallup World Poll) and academic providers (e.g. the World Values Survey). Against this background, this meeting aims to discuss the role that National statistical offices could play, alongside other actors, in collecting more robust information on different aspects of subjective well-being and the factors shaping it. This workshop is organised in the context of the Global Project on “Measuring the Progress of Societies” as a satellite meeting to the conference of the International Society for Quality of Life Studies on “Measures and goals for the progress of societies”. It will gather together producers and users of subjective well-being data, as well as representatives from National statistical offices and international organisations. Its aims are to: raise awareness within the statistical community on the importance of subjective well-being measures, as demonstrated by the existing experiences in National statistical offices and in other institutions; identify the best approaches for reliably measuring subjective well-being and to assess the scope for including suitable questions in regular surveys; evaluate possible future steps, including the possibility of developing a handbook on the measurement of subjective well-being. Participants to the workshop are invited to prepare information notes describing the state of play in SWB measures in their country.
Draft Agenda Thursday 23rd July 14.00-14.30 Welcoming remarks Enrico Giovannini, Chief Statistician, OECD Luigi Biggeri, President ISTAT Robert Cummins, President ISQOLS Leonardo Morlino, Professor of Political Sciences, Istituto Italiano di Scienze Umane 14.30-15.00 Opening session: measuring quality of life and societal progress: where do we stand? In the opening remarks the state of the art on the measurement of quality of life and societal progress will be presented, as well as the expected outcomes of the satellite meeting. 14.30-14.45 Enrico Giovannini, Chief Statistician, OECD 14.45-15.00 Alex Michalos, Emeritus Professor in Political Science, ISQOLS, "Importance of subjective well-being measures: history and overview" (ppt) 15.00-16.00 The importance of subjective well-being measures This session will provide a general overview and historic perspective on the various approaches used by researchers for the assessment of life-evaluation and hedonic experiences. It will identify some of the lessons learned from the research on subjective well-being and describe some of their policy applications, summarising evidence from various validation studies. Finally, it will indentify issues that still divide the scientific community and the role that National statistical offices should play to construct more robust measures. Chair: Munir A. Sheikh, Chief Statistician of Canada, Statistics Canada 15.00-15.30 John Helliwell, Arthur J.E. Child Foundation, Fellow of the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research Professor Emeritus of Economics, University of British Columbia, Measuring and Understanding Subjective Well-Being (pdf) 15.30-16.00 General discussion 16.00-16.15 COFFEE BREAK 16.15-17.45 Subjective measures of how people assess their own life How people value their own life represents one way to assess subjective well-being. Studies based on life-evaluation measures have gone in depth in identifying the main patterns of these measures, both across countries and over time. Life-evaluation can be captured through a variety of survey questions: from simple questions which ask people to state how happy or satisfied they are with their life, to questions that ask respondents to rank life over a ladder-of-life- scale. This session will review the advantages and disadvantages of various survey questions. Chair: Felicia Huppert, Director of the Well-being Institute, University of Cambridge 16.15-16.45 Stefano Bartolini, University of Siena, The Easterlin paradox and the measurement of well-being (pdf) 16.45-17.00 Discussion by Gerry O'Hanlon, Director General, Central Statistics Office, Ireland 17.00-17.45 General discussion Friday 24th July 8.30-9.30 Databases on Subjective well-being measures This session will review various databases of subjective well-being measures and discuss their advantages and disadvantages. 8.30-8.50 Ruut Veenhoven, Emeritus-professor of ‘social conditions for human happiness’ at Erasmus University, Netherlands, World Database of Happiness (ppt) 8.50-9.10 Heinz-Herbert Noll, Director of the Social Indicators Research Centre (Zsi), GESIS – Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences, Germany, SIMon – Social Indicators Monitor (online) (ppt) 9.10-9.30 Bob Tortora, Chief Methodologist, Gallup, World Poll (pdf) 9.30-11.00 Subjective measures of people’s hedonic experiences Subjective well-being can be assessed through measures of people’s hedonic experiences (e.g. experiences of pain, depression, joy and purpose). While these measures have traditionally been collected through small-scale experiments, approaches have been developed more recently to collect suitable information through large-scale household surveys (where people are asked to report about their hedonic experiences of the previous day) and through diaries (where people report their feelings on various types of activities they performed on the previous day). This session will review these various approaches and discuss their advantages and disadvantages. Chair: Bruno Zumbo, Professor of Psychometrics & Statistics, University of British Columbia 9.30-10.00 Arthur Stone, Distinguished Professor and Vice-Chair, Department of Psychiatry, Stony Brook University, Subjective measures of people’s hedonic experiences (ppt) 10.00-10.20 Discussion by Ms. Tineke de Jonge, Statistics Netherlands. 10.20-11.00 General discussion 11.00-11.15 COFFEE BREAK 11.15-13.00 National experiences with monitoring and analysing using subjective measures of well-being The goal of this session will be to describe how subjective measures could be used in the context of the periodic monitoring and reporting on quality of life for individual countries and regions. Chair: Jaume Garcia Villar, President INE, Spain 11.15-11.30 Linda Laura Sabbadini, Director, Division for Surveys on Living Conditions and Quality of Life, ISTAT, A new challenge for official statistics: integrating objective and subjective indicators (ppt) 11.30-11.45 Heinz-Herbert Noll, Indicators Research Centre (Zsi), GESIS – Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences, Germany, Measuring and Monitoring Subjective Well-Being - The German Experience (ppt) 11.45-12.00 Louise Skilton, UK Office for National Statistics, Stephen Hall - DEFRA (Department for Food and Rural Affairs), Measuring subjective wellbeing. A UK perspective (pdf) 12.00-12.15 Conal Smith, Manager Social Conditions, Statistics New Zealand, Social monitoring and subjective wellbeing: the New Zealand experience (ppt) 12.15-12.30 Jennifer H. Madans, Acting Co-Deputy Director, National Center for Health Statistics, United States, Beyond Biology: The Role of Subjective Measures of Functioning and Disability (ppt) 12.30-13.00 General discussion 13.00-14.30 LUNCH 14.30-16.30 International experiences with monitoring and analysing using subjective measures of well-being The goal of this session will be to describe how subjective measures could be used in the context of international studies. Chair: Katherine K. Wallman, Chief Statistician, US Office for Management and Budget 14.30-14.45 Vincent Tronet, Eurostat, Selection of relevant indicators for measuring subjective well-being in the European Union (pdf) 14.45-15.00 Mariano Rojas, Coordinator of the Initiative on "Measuring Progress in Societies: A Mexican Perspective", "Quality of life in Latin America: an experienced well-being approach" (pdf) 15.00-15.15 Chapple Simon, OECD, How can subjective well-being inform social policy (ppt) 15.15-15.30 Bob Tortora, Chief Methodologist of the Gallup World Poll, Item Missing Data in Measures of Evaluative and Experiential Well-Being: Preliminary Analysis (ppt) 15.30-15.45 Robert Cummins, President ISQOLS, The Personal Wellbeing Index and the International Wellbeing Group (ppt) 15.45-16.30 General discussion 16.30-16.45 COFFEE BREAK 16.45-17.45 Final Panel discussion The round table will identify what has been learnt from the workshop and the most suitable approaches that could be pursued to improve the availability of subjective well-being measures from official sources. It could lead to the adoption of some type of “statement” encouraging National statistical offices to routinely include some questions on subjective well-being in their standard questionnaires. Chair: Enrico Giovannini, Chief Statistician, OECD Felicia Huppert, Director of the Well-being Institute, University of Cambridge Filomena Maggino, University of Florence Munir A. Sheikh, Chief Statistician of Canada, Statistics Canada, Measuring Quality of Life:Issues and Options (ppt) Katherine K. Wallman, Chief Statistician, US Office for Management and Budget Background papers Israel: Subjective measurement of well-being in the Israeli Social Survey (pdf) Tineke de Jonge - Netherlands: The state of play in measuring SWB in the Netherlands (pdf) Felicia Huppert - What percentage of people in Europe are flourishing and what characterises them? (pdf) Juliet Michaelson - National Accounts of Well-being (ppt) Rosemarie Kobau, Joseph Sniezek, Matthew M. Zack - U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Well-Being Initiative (pdf) Alex Michalos - Stability and Change in Perceived Quality of Life Measures (pdf) Ruut Veenhoven - World Database of Happiness: Continuous Register of Research onSubjective Appreciation of Life (pdf) Ruut Veenhoven - Measures of Gross National Happiness (pdf)