OECD Guidelines on Measuring Subjective Well-being
Being able to measure people’s quality of life is fundamental when assessing the progress
of societies. There is now widespread acknowledgement that measuring subjective well-being
is an essential part of measuring quality of life alongside other social and economic
dimensions. As a first step to improving the measures of quality of life, the OECD
has produced Guidelines which provide advice on the collection and use of measures
of subjective well-being. These Guidelines have been produced as part of the OECD
Better Life Initiative, a pioneering project launched in 2011, with the objective
to measure society’s progress across eleven domains of well-being, ranging from jobs,
health and housing, through to civic engagement and the environment.
These Guidelines represent the first attempt to provide international recommendations
on collecting, publishing, and analysing subjective well-being data. They provide
guidance on collecting information on people's evaluations and experiences of life,
as well as on collecting “eudaimonic” measures of psychological well-being. The Guidelines
also outline why measures of subjective well-being are relevant for monitoring and
policy making, and why national statistical agencies have a critical role to play
in enhancing the usefulness of existing measures. They identify the best approaches
for measuring, in a reliable and consistent way, the various dimensions of subjective
well-being, and provide guidance for reporting on such measures. The Guidelines also
include a number of prototype survey modules on subjective well-being that national
and international agencies can use in their surveys.
Published on March 20, 2013