Indicators of Meaning and Wellbeing: a Proposal

Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative

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Department of International Development

Queen Elizabeth House

University of Oxford

MISSING DIMENSIONS

OF POVERTY

A Proposal of Indicators

Satisfaction and Meaning

Employment

Safety and Security

Empowerment

Going About Without Shame

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CONTENTS

INDICATORS OF SATISFACTION AND MEANING

Emma Samman

This paper sets out a proposal to gather data on subjective indicators of satisfaction and meaning. It proposes deriving eight indicators from questionnaires designed to measure 1) life satisfaction, 2) happiness and 3) psychological wellbeing.

The following criteria were used to choose suitable indicators for inclusion in individual or household surveys. First, the indicators need to be internationally comparable. At present, there is a dearth of data available on subjective perceptions in developing countries, particularly as they pertain to psychological wellbeing. Second, the indicators should assess not only the instrumental but also the intrinsic aspects of subjective satisfaction and meaning. Third, the choice of indicator shortlists draws on experience with particular indicators to date wherever possible, though some of the psychological wellbeing questionnaires have only been used on a very limited basis in representative surveys. Nonetheless, the questions we propose have all exhibited high internal consistency, test-retest reliability, structural validity, and convergent and discriminant analysis with other measures.

INDICATORS

We propose eight indicators to cover four aspects of subjective wellbeing and value: 1) overall and domain-specific life satisfaction; 2) happiness; 3) meaning in life; and 4) the three “basic psychological needs” of autonomy, competence and relatedness. The justification for our choice of these indicators over other leading measures of subjective and psychological well-being can be found in the paper, and are open to debate.

PROPOSED CATEGORIES AND INDICATORS (IN BOLD):

1.Overall and domain-specific life satisfaction

The domains proposed are material wellbeing (food and housing), health, productivity (work, education), security (physical safety); intimacy (relations with friends and family); community (community, actively helping others); and wellbeing from spiritual/religious/ philosophical beliefs.

2.Happiness

3.Meaning in life

4.Psychological need fulfilment

A)Autonomy

B)Competence

C)Relatedness (“the desire to feel connected to others”)

QUESTIONNAIRES

LIFE SATISFACTION MEASURES

Overall, how satisfied are you with (domain)/your life? Are you…

5Very satisfied

4Satisfied

3Neither unsatisfied or satisfied

2Unsatisfied

1Very unsatisfied

The domains used are adapted from The International Wellbeing Group (2006) Personal Wellbeing Index. The 5-scale measure is feasible for enumerator-administered questionnaires in developing countries.

Key reference:

International Wellbeing Group (2006). Personal Wellbeing Index. Melbourne: Australian Centre on Quality of Life, Deakin University ( /acqol/instruments/wellbeing_index.htm )

HAPPINESS

Taking all things together, would you say you are:

1Very happy

2Rather happy

3Not very happy

4Not at all happy

Key reference:

World database of happiness,

This variant of the ‘happiness’ question is the most frequently used internationally, having appeared in 190 nationally-representative surveys worldwide.

MEANING IN LIFE

Please take a moment to think about what makes your life feel important to you. Please respond to the following statements as truthfully and accurately as you can, and also please remember that these are very subjective questions and that there are no right or wrong answers. Please answer according to the scale below.

Absolutely MostlySomewhatCan’t saySomewhatMostlyAbsolutely

Untrueuntrueuntruetrue or falsetruetrue true

1234567

SHORT-FORM:

SOURCE: Steger questionnaire for Meaning in Life. He combines sub-scales to measure the presence of meaning and search for meaning. A short-form of the ‘presence’ subscale only is used here.

Reference:

Steger, M. et al. (2006), The Meaning in Life Questionnaire: Assessing the presence of and search for meaning in life. Journal of Counseling Psychology 53:1, p. 80-93.

PSYCHOLOGICAL WELLBEING

Please read each of the following items carefully, thinking about how it relates to your life, and then indicate how true it is for you. Use the following scale to respond:

A)AUTONOMY

B)COMPETENCE

C)RELATEDNESS

Source: Ryan and Deci Basic Psychological Needs scales.

INDICATORS OF EMPLOYMENT

Maria Ana Lugo

This paper proposes a set of indicators of employment, the first four relating to quality of employment and the last to quantity of employment.

INDICATORS

Protection:1.Informal employment

Income: 2. Income from employment (including self-employed earnings)

Safety: 3. Occupational hazard (accidents, illnesses, and workplace exposures)

Time: 4. Under/over employed (prefer to work more/less than at present)

5. Multiple activities (number of income generating jobs)

Quantity:6. Discouraged unemployed(prefer to work but have stopped searching)

These following questions are to be included in the labour questionnaire, wherever appropriate.

1. Protection: informal employment

Informal employment: we assume that informal sector enterprise questions are already included in the questionnaire, so that we only need to add questions to identify informal jobs not in the informal sector[2]

1. Yes

1. Is in the process of being registered

1. No

1. Do not know

1. Do not want to answer

1. Temporarily

1. Permanently

1. Yes

1. No

1. Income from employment

Asked of self-employed (agriculture and non-agriculture)[3] after soliciting a description of the business

Alternatively (or complementarily), the matrix approach aims at computing the quantity and values of inputs and outputs. Questions differ according to the type of activity: non-agriculture (manufacturing, traders and other services) and agriculture. We include the questions in the Appendix[4].

1. Occupational safety and health [5]

1. no permanent effect
2. permanent effect, able to work in the same job
3. permanent effect, able to work, not in the same job
4. permanent effect, not able to work at all

1. Upper respiratory disease (eg throat, nose, sinusis)
2. Lower respiratory disease (eg asthma, TB, pneumonia)
3. Hearing loss
4. Upper limb disorder (neck, shoulder, arm, wrist, hand)
5. Lower limb disorders (eg legs, foot)
6. Other musculoskeletal (back, hip)
7. Skin diseases

1. Eyes strain, eye problems
2. Headaches
3. Other organ damage (liver, kidney)
4. Cardiovascular disease
5. Stress / depression
6. Other

1. Inadequate clean water supplies;
2. Toilets inadequate / dirty
3. Tripping hazards;
4. Machine parts unguarded;
5. Work with cutting/ grinding handtools
6. Noise too loud to talk normally;
7. Exposed to extreme heat source

1. Use red or purple triangle chemicals
2. Mineral dusts in workplace
3. Vegetable dusts in workplace
4. Handling heavy loads
5. Uncomfortable work posture
6. Long hours of standing

1. Time-related underemployment[6]

1. It is your normal schedule

1. The work schedule was reduced due to low production or sales

1. Lack of credit or financing

1. Household work, caring for children

1. Family or personal reasons, sickness or accident

1. There is no more work

1. Other (specify)

1. Yes

1. No

1. Yes

1. No

1. Multiple jobs[7]

Following a question on how many hours the person worked in the past week (in all activities)

1. Yes
2. No

1. Discouraged Unemployment [8]

Should follow standard question about job search such as “Have you made any effort within the past … months to find work, established a business or an enterprise?” and answered “No”

1. Awaiting reply to earlier enquiries

1. Waiting to start arranged job, business or agricultural

1. Off season in agriculture

1. Have a temporary / occasional work

1. Got tired of searching

1. Thought no work available

1. Other (specify)

If the respondent answers “5” or “6” then she or he will be considered discouraged unemployed.

INDICATORS OF SAFETY AND SECURITY

Rachael Diprose[9]

‘Poverty never results from the lack one thing but from many interlocking factors that cluster in poor people’s experiences and definitions of poverty.’ (Narayan et al, 2000: 32).

WHO definition of violence: The intentional use of physical force or power, threatened or actual, against oneself, another person, or against a group or community, that either results in or has a high likelihood of resulting in injury, death, psychological harm, maldevelopment or deprivation.

Why is violence an important dimension of poverty?:One of the greatest impediments to human security in the post-Cold War era is not inter-state wars resulting in mass destruction fought by the armed forces of nation states, but violence, perpetrated by individuals, groups, and state actors within the internal borders of nations (Hegre et al, 2001). Violence, resulting from everyday crime, large scale communal conflicts, insurgencies, or through state repression can and does undo the development gains achieved in education, health, employment, capital generation and infrastructure provision. Violence is a public health problem, a human rights problem, a community problem, and a problem for the state and the international community. It impedes human freedom to live safely and securely and can sustain poverty traps in many communities. However, violence is not always an inevitable part of human interaction. Many multi-ethnic, multi-religious, and poor peoples manage human interaction and channel conflict and the propensity for violence in peaceful ways.[10] Yet violence is still prevalent throughout the world. The World Report on Violence and Health (WHO, 2002: 10-11) states that self-inflicted, interpersonal or collective violence kills more than 1.6 million people every year with an overall age-adjusted rate of 28.8 per 100 000 population.

Why measure violence in household surveys?:An estimated 5.06 million people die each year as the result of injury (both accidental and intentional) (WHO, 2004a:1). According to data from high income countries[11] alone, for every person killed from injury, approximately 30 times as many people are hospitalised from injury, and 300 times as many are treated in hospital emergency rooms and then released.[12] Furthermore, the Human Development Report (2000) estimates that 5 million people were killed in 1990s from civil war. These figures, while horrifying, are vulnerable to gross under-reportage due to poor data availability, but do give some indication as to the seriousness of the problem, particularly in developing countries. Many of the world’s experts working on poverty reduction and violence prevention in particular, such as the World Health Organization (2005), the Human Security Centre (2005), the Inter American Institute of Human Rights (Perez-Valero, 2002: 9, cf Le Monde July 1992), and the agencies of the United Nations such as the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC resolution 2003/26) and the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime argue that there is an absence of reliable and comparable data collected at regular intervals over time which can adequately inform their policy and program design, as well as program monitoring and evaluation.

Types of violence: The aim of this paper is to outline a shortlist of indicators of both violent crime and conflict based violence which can be used in the large household surveys conducted by nation states, as well as international development agencies and others who conduct surveys in multi-country and multi-locality contexts. There are various types of violence identified by WHO including: self-directed violence or self-harm (deliberate overdose on drugs and alcohol, self-mutilation, self-immolation, suicide) – not measured here; interpersonal violence (e.g. assault, homicide, intimate partner violence, sexual violence); legal intervention (action by police or other law enforcement personnel); and, war, civil insurrection and disturbances (e.g. demonstrations and riots). This paper seeks to measure interpersonal violence, violence from legal intervention (by determining the perpetrators of violence, and violence from war, communal conflict, civil insurrection and disturbances through household surveys.

What are the indicators?: Combining measures of violence conflict and violent crime. The data proposed for collection in this paper covers four important areas:

1) the incidence and frequency of both general violent crime and more conflict related violence against both property and person (and incidents of theft which is an indicator of people’s safety and security);

2) the incidence of domestic violence (asked to women only in the health module of international surveys) and

3) perceptions of whether domestic violence is a punishable act either by the state or socially appointed actors;

4) perceptions of threat(s) to security and safety, both now and in the future.

Within these realms there are questions which seek to measure injury and death rates; the victims and perpetrators of violence and the location where incidents take place; as well as avenues for recourse from incidents of violence and satisfaction with these. Such data is important for policy makers and programme designers.[13]

What complementary data do we need? All indicators need to be mapped by age, gender, economic status, education, and occupation which will be captured in other modules of the multi-dimensional surveys. However, to truly understand and use the data specific to security and safety, demographic data on religion, ethnicity, language group, migration status, IDP and refugee status, and rural-urban status, should be collected while ever it does not undermine the implementation of the survey. Such data is needed to determine vulnerable groups, proximate causes for the violence, and targets for violence prevention programmes.

What are just some of the indicators what can be constructed from the data? With careful sampling and survey implementation:

• Rates of different types of theft per 100,000 head of population;
• Rates of robbery per 100,000 head of population;
• Rates of homicide, assault, and battery per 100,000 head of population;
• Rates of rape, attempted rape and indecent assault per 100,000 head of population;
• Rates of property destruction per 100,0000 head of population;
• Rates of kidnapping, gunshot crimes, and bomb injuries and deaths per 100,000 head of population;
• Rates of gunshot injuries and deaths per 100,000 head of population;
• Geographic Risk rates (risk of people living in different geographic location to different types of violence);
• Risk of injury/death per type of violence (injury/death as percentage of frequency of type);
• Perpetrator profiles (percentage of type of perpetrator per type of violence)
• Percentage of population reporting violent incidents to informal or formal institutions (per type, including domestic violence);
• Reporting gap (frequency of reporting as a proportion of frequency of incident)
• Percentage of population satisfied with informal institutions role in addressing violence;
• Percentage of population satisfied with state agencies role in addressing violence;
• Correlations between: attempted rape and rape; attempted theft and theft; geographic location and risk of violence; gender and vulnerability to different types of violence; ethnic, religious, and other identities and vulnerability to different types of violence; injury and likelihood of death; different types of violence and likelihood of injury;
• Rates of domestic violence against women (with varying intensities of acts perpetrated)
• Attitudes of women towards punishment of domestic violence (proportions of intensity of domestic violence experience against attitude towards punishment, including most appropriate domain for punishment)
• Perception of likelihood of future victimization (of property violence or human-physical violence);
• Perception of the importance of different types of violence together with other forms of shock

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