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Designing Policies for a Wellbeing Economy arrow Evaluation arrow Wellbeing assessments

Wellbeing assessments

How can you best keep track of changes in wellbeing and understand what led to those shifts?
purpose

Purpose

To monitor social and ecological wellbeing over time and identify any shifts or changes

Conducting regular assessments and evaluations can help you better understand causal relationships between wellbeing dimensions, so that you can improve your strategy design processes.

These regular assessments are also an important way for you to communicate economic progress in terms of changes in wellbeing, which will be important in shifting popular narratives regarding the purpose of the economy and our role within it. You will want to be conducting and using evaluations throughout the policy design process to inform your strategy, policies, and implementation.

Resources

To find the resources from all of these chapters, please visit the tools and resources page

Monitoring & Evaluation

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Wellbeing reports

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Collaborative outcomes reporting

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Time use and wellbeing surveys

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Theory of change

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Systems analysis

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Examples

Edmonton, Canada – ‘Genuine Progress Indicators’

The chief economist of the city commissioned a set of Genuine Progress Indicators to monitor the city's progress on its 10-year plan. The index includes 48 indicators across economic, social, and environmental dimensions.

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The Netherlands—Monitor of Wellbeing and the Sustainable Development Goals

The Monitor shows the Netherlands' progress on wellbeing. It includes present wellbeing as well as that of future generations, and also takes into account the impacts 'elsewhere', that is, how the actions in the Netherlands affect people in other countries.

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United Kingdom—Citizens' Economic Council

The Royal Society for Arts, Manufacturers and Commerce (RSA), a network of leading change-makers in the UK, developed a Citizen’s Economic Council. Through this, 54 UK citizens spent two years co-creating economic policy with policymakers.

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Tips

  • Publish regular wellbeing assessments in the form of reports and engage the media and communities in discussions on the progress made
  • Use the intervention logic or theory of change developed during the policy design process to identify specific concrete targets and impact indicators that can help to monitor shifts at all levels.
  • Ensure the monitoring and evaluation plan is considered at the beginning and throughout the policy design process, to develop a structured plan for data collection, engagements, coordination, etc.
  • Identify areas where more wellbeing information or data is needed to inform policymaking processes in the future and build this learning into future monitoring and evaluation planning.
  • Identify if there have been any major changes in wellbeing in particular areas or amongst particular demographics, paying special attention to changes in wellbeing for vulnerable groups and the environment.
  • When conducting a holistic assessment of wellbeing (social, environmental and economic), assess changes over time with the aim to understand relationships and possible causality in the system.
  • Facilitate discussions about overall wellbeing performance and if the wellbeing vision has changed.
  • Use personal stories gathered throughout policy design process to complement quantitative analysis to assess the status of collective wellbeing and progress.
  • Develop a wellbeing database so that the public can access and utilise wellbeing data for independent research and analysis.