Children’s subjective well-beingFindings from national surveys in England

International Society for Child Indicators Conference, 27th July 2011

Overview

Gwyther Rees

The research programme

Collaboration between The Children’s Society and University of York

Main aims: Understand the concept of well-being taking

full account of young people’s perspectives To establish self-report measures and use

these to:• Identify reasons for variations in well-being• Monitor changes in well-being over time

Principles

Focus on young people’s views and ideas

Adopt a holistic approach

Take account of diversity

Focus on present as well as future well-being

Adopt a positive approach

Research phases

2005 survey Exploratory qualitative research with 8,000 young people aged 13 to 15 in schools, plus literature review

2008 survey 7,000 young people aged 10 to 15 in schools

2010 survey 5,400 young people aged 8 to 15 in schools

Quarterly surveys 2,000 young people aged 8 to 15 in households every 3 months from July 2010

2008 survey

Overall well-being

Three measures:

Happiness with life as a whole (0 to 10)

Cantril’s ladder (0 to 10)

Shortened version of Huebner’s life satisfaction scale (5 items) (0 to 20)

2008 survey: Overall well-being

Most young people happy and satisfied

But around 7% of young people relatively unhappy – low well-being

0

100

200

300

400

500

600

700

800

900

1000

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

Well-being score (0 to 10)

No

. o

f p

eo

ple

Variations in well-being

Decline in well-being with age Slightly lower well-being amongst females Some variation also re: family structure, family

economic status Little or no variation by factors such as

ethnicity, religion, country of birth

All of these factors only explained around 7% of variation in overall well-being

However…

Life events: Being bullied

7.67.2

6.5

8.0

0.0

2.0

4.0

6.0

8.0

10.0

Never Hardly ever Sometimes Often

Frequency of being bullied in last 12 months

Ov

era

ll w

ell-

be

ing

(0

-10

)

Family relationships

8.1

6.9

6.0

7.9

6.8

5.9

6.9

5.9

7.7

0.0

2.0

4.0

6.0

8.0

10.0

Agree Neither Disagree

Ov

era

ll w

ell

-be

ing

(0

-10

)

Both parents Step family Lone parent

‘My family gets along well together’

Conclusions from 2008

Explaining variations in well-being: Individual and family factors explain relatively

little of variation Poverty needs further exploration Recent life events may play a more significant

role Other research suggests that we need to take

account of personality

Need to further investigate different approaches to measuring subjective well-being

2010 survey

Survey method

A questionnaire was developed after cognitive testing and piloting

Two-stage cluster sampling Participants filled the questionnaire online Administered by NFER Data collection took place between December

2010 and January 2011 Over 5,400 young people aged 8 to 15 from

mainstream primary and secondary school in England took part

Data processing and analysis

Data processing and analysis Data cleaning and analysis by SPSS Checking psychometric properties by factor

analysis, Cronbach’s Alpha Univariate analysis - mean or percentages Bivariate analysis – parametric and non-

parametric Multivariate analysis - Multiple linear

regression, logistic regression and tobit regression

Preliminary findings only - limitations

Today’s presentations

1. Approaches to measuring children’s subjective well-being

2. Life events and subjective well-being

3. Personality and subjective well-being

4. Child-centred measures of child poverty and links with subjective well-being

Approaches to measuring children’s well-being

Happiness with life as a whole

0

5

10

15

20

25

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

Happiness with life as a whole

Per

cen

tag

e

Single item measure (0 to 10)Mean = 7.6. Below the mid-point = 9.2%.

Cantril’s ladder

0

5

10

15

20

25

30

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

Cantril's ladder score

Per

cen

tag

e

Single item measure – ‘worst possible life’ to ‘best possible life’ (0 to 10)Mean = 7.5. Below the mid-point = 7.8%.

Life satisfaction

Shortened version of Huebner’s Student Life Satisfaction Scale. Five items measured on five-point Likert scale:

My life is going well My life is just right I wish I had a different kind of life I have a good life I have what I want in life

Single factor. Cronbach’s alpha = 0.86. However queries about reliability with children below the age of 10.

Life satisfaction

2%

2%

6%

2%

4%

4%

7%

12%

3%

9%

15%

21%

18%

11%

24%

53%

46%

31%

49%

41%

27%

23%

34%

35%

22%

0% 25% 50% 75% 100%

My life is goingwell

My life is justright

I wish I had adifferent kind of

life

I have a good life

I have what Iwant in life

S Neg Neg Mid Pos S Pos

Life satisfaction

0

2

4

6

8

10

12

14

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20

Life satisfaction

Per

cen

tag

e

Sum of five items (0 to 20)Mean = 14.4. Below the mid-point = 10.3%.

Correlations

Cantril’s ladder Happiness with life

Life satisfaction .742 .741

Cantril’s ladder .739

Other properties

Missing dataTest-retest reliability

Life satisfaction 15%* .84

Cantril’s ladder <1% .59

Happiness with life <1% .63

Distributions for different age groups

8 to 9 years old

0

5

10

15

20

25

30

35

40

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10Cantril's ladder score

Perc

en

tage

14 to 15 years old

0

5

10

15

20

25

30

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10Cantril's ladder score

Perc

en

tage

Associations with other variables

A mixed picture, although the differences are not large:

Life satisfaction is most strongly associated with age and gender. Cantril’s ladder is least strongly associated.

Cantril’s ladder is most strongly associated with family economic status

Happiness with life is most strongly associated with recent experiences of bullying

Extending the approach

Our research also measures subjective well-being in specific domains, e.g.:

Family relationships School Appearance Amount of choice in life

We have used single and multi-item measures across these domains.In 2008 survey found that single item measures had almost as much explanatory power as multi-item measures re: life satisfaction.

Example: Family relationships

Single item (from 0 to 10): How happy are you with your relationships

with your family?

Multi-item (5 items each on 5 point Likert scale), e.g.:

I enjoy being at home with my family My parents (or carers) treat me fairly

Reliability and stability

Test-retest reliability of single item measures in the range 0.48 (health) to 0.72 (family relationships).

Reliability for multi-item scales generally higher.

However, single-item measures relatively stable across four waves of survey work – mean scores and rank order of domains

Selected domain means: quarterly survey, four waves

6.6

6.8

7

7.2

7.4

7.6

7.8

8

8.2

8.4

8.6

Jul 2010 Nov 2010 Jan 2011 Apr 2011

Hap

pin

ess

(0 t

o 1

0)

Family

Health

Time use

School

The future

Other learning points from domain measures

Queries re: wording of statements in multi-item scales – e.g. ‘My family gets along well together’, ‘My parents and I do fun things together’.

Measures of subjective well-being? Normative assumptions? Completeness?

Multi-item measures do not necessarily show stronger associations with other variables than single-item measures.

Conclusions

Multi-item measures: Good reliability and short-term stability Particularly suitable for small samples and

measures of change.Single item measures:

Lower levels of missing data Reasonably stable for large samples Contain less assumptions / more open?

Further cross-national research needed to explore validity and reliability and relative merits.