Individual People: Wellbeing
Skills Development
Health
High-risk behaviour
If you would like to demonstrate, measure, or check the effect your organisation is having on people, this section can help.
After identifying indicators, you can go to Compare Research Methods and use a variety of approaches to find out about peoples’ attitudes, opinions, and perceptions.
Individual People: Wellbeing
See also: Wellbeing at Work
The New Economics Foundation has put forward the idea that promoting people’s well-being should be considered one of the ultimate aims of society – alongside social justice and ecological sustainability. By ‘well-being’ we mean people’s experience of their quality of life. In this section, we aim to break this concept down into component parts, showing how even ‘soft’ outcomes like a change in a person’s well-being can be measured by a social enterprise.
The New Economics Foundation’s model of well-being has two personal dimensions:1
- People’s satisfaction with their lives.
- Their sense of personal development, sometimes called positive functioning or personal expressiveness.
and a social context:
- Their social well-being – belonging to their communities, a positive attitude towards others, feeling that they are contributing to society and engaging in what could be called ‘pro-social behaviour’.
Research has shown that the key factors for promoting well-being at work are:
- Personal control of work load
- Work matched to skill level
- Variety of content
- Role clarity
- Financial rewards
- Physical security
- Support from supervisors
- Relationships with colleagues
- Status of role – that one’s work is valued both within and outside the workplace
- Sense of identity with the organisation – including its purpose or mission.
Who might use these indicators?
These indications might be used by social firms, employment related organisations, co-operatives, and others that are focused on the development and well-being of individual people.
Measuring well-being
Social enterprises affect people’s well-being in many ways, for example through employment (including volunteers) and the services that they provide or goods that they produce. They may also have smaller effects on broader stakeholder groups, such as the communities they operate within.
Below you will find a collection of indicators that can help you create a fuller picture of an individual’s well-being. How much you use the questions as a starting point for a conversation is a matter of personal and organisational choice. It is suggested that all questions in the same group are asked together, followed by a space for conversation.
Most of the questions use an 11-point scale:
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0 (not at all) to 10 (totally or extremely) for scoring. |
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Social Indicators: Well-being
| Assessment of overall life – to be asked either as the first or last question – and needs to be included in all assessments | ||||||||||||||||||||
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| These questions measure positive and negative affect – this is a measure of overall well-being and should follow the questions above. | ||||||||||||||||||||
Indicate to what extent you have felt this way in the past few weeks: (0 = not at all; 5 = moderately; 10 = extremely)
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| Questions below regard people’s social well-being. | ||||||||||||||||||||
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| Questions below cover the main aspects of people’s lives. It is feasible to add other realms of people’s lives that feel appropriate to the context. | ||||||||||||||||||||
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| These questions below cover people’s experience of their working life in more detail. These are appropriate to use if the interviewee is an employee or a volunteer with the organisation. | ||||||||||||||||||||
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Skills Development
Many social enterprises seek to help people to increase their skills in specific areas, especially those that are needed in the workplace – such as ‘hard’ skills (learning how to do a particular job) or ‘soft’ skills (those related to being part of a workplace, communicating with others, and personal effectiveness). The end result may be increased attractiveness to an employer and an increase in self-confidence and well-being. It can therefore be useful to try to capture both aspects when you decide upon your indicators.
Who might use these indicators?
These indicators might be used by social firms, employment-related organisations, co-operatives, and others that are focused on the development and well-being of individual people.
Measuring skills increase
In the table below you will find some indicators that can be used to show that change is happening. These indicators can be used objectively, for example by observing the person in action at regular intervals, or subjectively by asking them what they are able to do.
Table: Social Indicators: increases in individuals’ skills
Increasing people’s skill/competence in social interaction
- Relationships with peers
- Relationships with people in ‘authority’ positions
- Ability to work in a team with other people
- Increase in social networks
- Increase in tolerance of others’ differences
Increasing personal effectiveness and aptitude and life skills.
- Improved ability to plan
- Improved ability to prioritise
- Ability to reason verbally
- Numerical reasoning
- Increased problem-solving skills
Increasing ‘basic’ work skills and attributes.
- Attainment of basic literacy (reading, writing)
- Basic numerical skills, including ability to manage money
- Timekeeping, reliability
- Ability to complete forms
- Completion of a CV
- Improved presentation skills
- Appearance suitable to the workplace
Health
Social enterprises can have both direct and indirect effects on physical and mental health, as well as on an individual’s private and social behaviours (e.g. substance abuse and preventive measure) that affect their health.
Who might use these indicators?
Social firms, organisations that run health and fitness centres, and medically-related social enterprises would all have a potential interest in understanding their effects on people’s physical and mental health. In addition, organisations that work with individuals that have difficulties with drugs or who are homeless may be interested in using indicators specially designed for the groups of people that they work with.
Measuring health indicators
There are different ways to measure changes in health. Some indicators are visible, some can be checked based on GP or other medical records, and some can only be measured by people’s own reports and responses. Usually, a combination of self-reported and directly observed indicators is best to get a more holistic picture of a person’s physical or mental health.
The table below shows general indicators that can be used to demonstrate changes in health, as well as indicators that are targeted towards those with drug addiction. In this section, we draw upon two scales originally developed for assessing the progress of individuals with drug or alcohol addictions, the Maudsley Addiction Profile (MAP)2 and the Christo Inventory for Substance-misuse Services (CISS)3.
Social indicators: physical health
| Increase physical health | ||||||
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| Improvement in Physical Health- particularly useful as related to drugs/alcohol addiction or very poor health. | ||||||
Self-reported Improvement in how frequently the person has experienced the following problems in the past month: never / rarely / sometimes / often / always 4
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A trained observer / interviewer may give a score based on the severity of health problems: ranging from 0-2 5
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The sample indicators in the table below can help you to show the effects your organisation has on other areas of a person’s life.
Social indicators: personal improvement
| Improvements in Work and Training | ||||||
Have you had: 6
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A trained observer / interviewer may give a score based on the severity of health problems: ranging from 0-2 7
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| Improvement in people’s ability to be in a relationship with others (related to substance abuse, but could be used to ask in relation to any condition that adversely affects relationships) 8 | ||||||
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High-risk behaviour
Social enterprises may seek to help people change patterns of behaviour that result in harm to themselves or to other people. In this case, it is often useful:
- To measure progress along the way towards stopping the behaviour entirely, as it can be a long process.
- To use these indicators alongside measurements of changes in a person’s well-being. 9
Who might use these indicators?
Some organisations that work with people that have difficulties with drugs, severe mental illness, or other risk factors for behaving in or harmful ways. Other social enterprises that work with teens or adults may find these questions useful if they pertain to a particular person’s situation and can show changes in their behaviour over time.
Measuring high-risk behaviour
The table below gives sample methods for asking individuals about high-risk behaviour including the use of drugs or participating in activities that present a high risk of HIV-infection. It also uses questions adapted from the MAP and CISS scales (indicated in parentheses) as illustrations of how you may go about asking questions in these areas.
Social indicators: high-risk behaviour
| Decreasing drug-abuse behaviour (MAP) | ||||||
Note: these questions would asked during a verbal survey face-to-face |
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| Drug/alcohol use (CISS) | ||||||
A trained observer / interviewer may give a score based on the severity of health problems: ranging from 0-2
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| Reduce high-HIV risk Sexual / injecting behaviour (CISS) | ||||||
A trained observer / interviewer may give a score based on the severity of health problems: ranging from 0-2
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Homelessness and Residence
It may also be helpful to measure changes in people’s housing or living conditions as a way to show improvement in people’s life stability or other forms of progress.
Social indicators: homelessness and residence
| Homelessness/ residence (MAP) | ||||||
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| Stability of living situation (CISS) | ||||||
Give a score based on the severity of social problems: 0, 1, 2
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1 Further details of the academic/research basis of nef’s model of well-being can be found in nef’s well-being manifesto, which is downloadable at www.neweconomics.org.
2 Maudsley Addiction Profile is a public domain research instrument and may be used free of charge for not-for-profit applications. Users are asked to cite the following reference when using the instrument: Marsden, J et al (1998) The Maudsley Addiction Profile (MAP): A brief instrument for assessing treatment outcome, Addiction 93(12): 1857-1867.
3 The sample questions based on CISS are indicative, and are modified slightly for to enhance their clarity for presentation in this toolkit. For use within your organisation, CISS can be used and copied free of charge as long as you do not modify the wording or title of the CISS, which would render reliability of the scale as a whole and its validity and comparison useless. See the CISS website for more information http://users.breathemail.net/drgeorgechristo/ Reference: Christo, G., Spurrell, S. and Alcorn, R. (2000). Validation of the Christo Inventory for Substance-misuse Services (CISS): a simple outcome evaluation tool. Drug and Alcohol Dependence,59, 189-197.
4 Question taken from MAP scale referenced above.
5 Question taken from CISS scale referenced above.
6 Question taken from MAP scale referenced above.
7 Question taken from CISS scale referenced above.
8 Question taken from MAP scale referenced above.
9 It is important to note, however, that although a person may be making progress in many ways, that person may rate his well being to be quite low, as changing habits and addictions can be physically, psychologically and emotionally difficult.
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