Session 1: Qualitative & mixed methods approaches to wellbeing - 9.00-10.30
- The meaning of wellbeing: a grassroots level perspective ? How much of it is visible to the researchers? - Meera Tiwari
- Well-Being is a Process of Becoming: Research with Organic Farmers in Madagascar - Cathy Farnworth
- Does Mixed Methods Research Matter To Understanding Childhood Well-Being? - Andrew Sumner, Nicola Jones
- 'Translation is not enough’: Using the Global Person Generated Index (GPGI) to assess Individual Quality of Life in Bangladesh, Thailand, and Ethiopia - Laura Camfield, Danny Ruta

Session 2: Culture and wellbeing? - 14.00-15.30
- Measuring quality of life in Thailand: a measure using culture-specific items and individual priorities for well-being - Alison Woodcock, Laura Camfield, Faith Martin, Allister McGregor
- Cross Cultural Analysis of the Personal and National Wellbeing Index across three different cities: Bogota, Toronto and Belo Horizonte. Evidences for the emergence of new domains - Eduardo Wills Herrera
- Needs, Wants, and Wellbeing: Perceived Needs in Northeast and South Thailand - Laura Camfield, Allister McGregor, Alison Woodcock

Session 3: Wellbeing & development - 16.00-17.30
- Subjective Well-Being from a Developing Country Perspective. Anti-Development in an Upside Down World - Jorge Yamamoto
- Enhancing Poverty-Abatement Programs: A Subjective Well-Being Contribution - Mariano Herrera Rojas
-Towards a four tiered analysis of links between economic and subjective wellbeing indicators using data from Peru - James Copestake, Wan-Jung Chou, Monica Guillen Royo, Tim Hinks, Jackeline Velazco

The meaning of wellbeing: a grassroots level perspective – how much of it is visible to the researchers?

Meera Tiwari [email protected]

This paper discusses the grassroots level understanding of wellbeing. There is rich and ever expanding literature on the meaning of wellbeing in development studies. The research community has intensely debated the relationship between wellbeing and poverty. There is recognition and increasing agreement on the inter-changeability of wellbeing and poverty reduction amidst researchers. In recent times wellbeing has been scrutinised under non-income and income wellbeing within the discourse on multidimensionality of poverty. The measurement and the quest for a better understanding of wellbeing in developing countries have never been higher on the international development agenda. The agenda, the debates and research outputs though in a majority of instances are based on quantitative data. The World Bank’s comprehensive effort to capture the voices of the poor has come under much criticism for rigour and storytelling. There is paucity of studies that focus on the perception and understanding of poor about their wellbeing in the literature. The current study is an attempt to address this gap.
The paper is based on the findings of the primary research carried out by the author in villages in Dhar district of Madhya Pradesh and Madhubani district of Bihar in India. Three income categories of rural households – those below poverty line, those with marginal landholdings, and those with medium landholdings were interviewed using semi-structured instruments. The paper identifies commonality in the perception of the population at the grassroots level and the researchers in the understanding of wellbeing. More importantly, it draws attention to factors critical in how wellbeing is understood at the grassroots but which may be outside the radar of the researchers. It is envisaged that such a mapping of the understanding of wellbeing has important long-term policy implications for poverty reduction.

Well-Being is a Process of Becoming: Research with Organic Farmers in Madagascar

Cathy Rozel Farnworth [email protected]

Malagasy players see in export-orientated organic agriculture a way for the island to build upon its historic export strengths (spices, essential oils, medicinal plants and tropical fruits). They point to the de facto organic status of most farming in the country and view organic production strategies as a means for Malagasy farmers to differentiate their produce in the highly competitive world market. However, producing for the export market poses significant challenges for Malagasy farming communities. The promotion of entrepreneurial, individualistic values by private players and NGOs, for example by seeking out and developing ‘model farmers’, harms norms that prize togetherness. The promotion of certain types of agronomic practice, understood by the international organic agriculture movement to form the heart of good agricultural practice, can seem to undermine the basics of good farming locally. For example slash and burn cultivation is not permitted under organic certification, but has for centuries been employed as a weed and fertilisation management strategy. Manuring is generally considered integral to organic farming, but is ‘taboo’ in Madagascar. Complying with the rules and regulations of organic farming for export can be very stressful, and change long-standing ways of relating to land.

Despite, therefore, its apparent ‘fit’ with existing farming practice, ‘true’ certified organic practice does not necessarily offer a means towards achieving a Malagasy-defined ‘good life’. Yet farmers are very interested in the opportunities for much-needed cash that organic farming offers. This presentation will ask: Is it possible for poor people to set the terms of debate in international commodity chains? How can people engage in the world community, yet protect and develop their own vision of a ‘good life’? How can other stakeholders in international commodity chains ensure that their actions do not harm the ability of poor people ‘to be this, and o do that’?
The theoretical framework is inspired by Sen and Nussbaum’s work on capabilities, and I will set out nine principles that I have developed which seem important when trying to capture and measure ‘quality of life’. Centring the presentation on organic farming is useful because it illustrates how an attempt to ‘act ethically’ can nevertheless go awry if a conceptual understanding of what ‘counts’ as a good life is not understood by other, generally more powerful, stakeholders in a commodity chain. The presentation itself will be image-rich, and I will try to ensure some audience participation, for example through a pair work exercise. Of course, I will keep to time.

Full paper

Does Mixed Methods Research Matter To Understanding Childhood Well-Being?

Nicola Jones, ODI and Andrew Sumner [email protected]

There has been a rich debate in development studies on combining research methods in recent years. We explore the particular challenges and opportunities surrounding mixed methods approaches to childhood well-being. We argue that there are additional layers of complexity due to the distinctiveness of childhood poverty. This paper is structured as follows. Sections 2 and 3 discuss the nature of mixed methods approaches and tensions. Sections 4 and 5 apply these debates to researching childhood well-being in particular. Section 6 concludes and discusses future work.

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‘Translation is not enough’: Using the Global Person Generated Index (GPGI) to assess Individual Quality of Life in Bangladesh, Thailand, and Ethiopia

Laura Camfield and Danny Ruta [email protected]

Currently few subjective measures of Quality of Life (QoL) are available for use in developing countries, which limits their theoretical, methodological, and practical contribution (for example, exploring the relationship between economic development and QoL, and ensuring effective and equitable service provision). One reason for this is the difficulty of ensuring that translated measures preserve conceptual, item, semantic, operational, measurement; and functional equivalence (Herdman et al, 1998:331), which is illustrated by an account of the translation, pre-piloting, and administration of a new individualised QoL measure, the Global Person Generated Index or ‘GPGI’. The GPGI is based on the widely used Patient Generated Index (Ruta et al, 1994) and offers many of the advantages of the participatory approaches commonly used in developing countries, with added methodological rigour, and quantitative outcomes. It was successfully validated in Bangladesh, Thailand, and Ethiopia, using quantitative and qualitative methods - open-ended, semi-structured interviews (SSIs), conducted immediately post-administration. Both the measure and method of ‘qualitative validation’ described later in the paper offer an exciting alternative for future researchers and practitioners in this field. The quantitative results suggest the GPGI shows cultural sensitivity, and is able to capture both the areas that are important to respondents, and aspects of life one would expect to impact on QoL in developing countries. There were strong correlation between scores from the GPGI and SSIs for the area of health, and moderate correlations for ‘material wellbeing' (MWB) and children. Weak to moderate correlations were observed between the Satisfaction with Life Scale and the GPGI; however, the highest coefficient was between the GPGI and the most conceptually similar item. Statistically significant differences were seen in GPGI scores between rich and poor, urban and rural respondents, and different countries. Health and material wellbeing scores, derived from the SSIs, also showed a linear relationship with GPGI scores, with a suggestion of curvilinearity at the higher levels, as predicted by a general QoL causal model. In conclusion, the GPGI has great potential for use in this area, especially when supported by extensive interviewer training, and supplemented with a cognitive appraisal schedule.

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Subjective Well-Being from a Developing Country Perspective. Anti-Development in an Upside Down World

Jorge Yamamoto [email protected]

This conference presents the wellbeing in Perú perspective in three main areas: epistemological, empirical and ethical. Epistemological issue is stated by an alternative methodological approach to well-being without reliance on externally dictated theories and indicators, through an emic and post-hoc procedure. Empirical results (iteration between ethnographic, in-depth interviews -N=400-, psychometric scales -N=500-; content analysis and structural equation modeling) will be presented with an alternative theory of needs, an alternative satisfaction with the life model and an integrative well- being (which includes personality and values) model which leads to a multilevel theory of social behaviour.
These results provide explanations about why appointed third world countries are higher in world happiness surveys than self appointed first world countries. Two ethical issues will be discussed: (1) If there is evidence that appointed third world countries have different life goals, and different values compared to self appointed first world countries, (and those “third world” goals and values seems to be highly adaptive) and international development programs understand development in their own way, can we conclude that international development is a post-modern way of benevolent imperialism? (2) What is the role of developed countries wellbeing theories and research programs in this process? In addition, some two common sense questions will be discussed: What is the logic behind the international development effort to lead these countries to follow the unhappiness society model? Are there some Emancipatory challenges for the people and academics from subjective wellbeing oriented countries?

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Cross Cultural Analysis of the Personal and National Wellbeing Index across three different cities: Bogota, Toronto and Belo Horizonte. Evidences for the emergence of new domains

Professor Eduardo Wills H [email protected]

There is a need for comparative research about subjective wellbeing indicators at the national or local levels. This research provides a framework for comparing subjective wellbeing indicators at the city level. A comparative cross cultural study was performed in 2006 in three cities (Bogotá, Toronto and Belo Horizonte) of Canada, Colombia and Canada. The Personal Wellbeing Index PWI and the National Wellbeing Index NWI were proposed for interpersonal comparisons at the city level. The Personal Wellbeing Index was created from the Comprehensive Quality of Life Scale (ComQol, Cummins, 1993) at Deakin University, Melbourne as part of the International Wellbeing group, and has been successfully applied and validated in other cities such as Bogotá, Colombia (Wills, 2006).
Cummins et al (1994) and Cummins (1996) have provided both empirical and theoretical arguments for the use of seven domains that comprise PWI including satisfaction with the individual’s standard of living, health, achievements in life, personal relationships, security, connectedness with community and future security. The National Well-being Index (NWI) includes six domains (Satisfaction with the Economic Situation, the State of the Environment, Social Conditions, the Government, Business and Local Security).
The study presents the results of the validation of PWI and NWI and their constituent domains in the three cities as well as their comparative results. Two new domains: satisfaction with spirituality and religiosity and satisfaction with ethnic diversity are proposed and tested as possible significant contributors of satisfaction with life as a whole scale (SWLS) (Diener, et al, 1985). The article discusses the importance of satisfaction with spirituality and religiosity for explaining subjective wellbeing indicators. Cross-cultural recommendations of how to apply and interpret the index to a wider number of cities, as well as the index’s strengths and limitations are discussed.

Full paper

Measuring quality of life in Thailand: a measure using culture-specific items and individual priorities for well-being

Alison Woodcock*, Laura Camfield**, Faith Martin**, Allister McGregor** a[email protected]

Organizational affiliations:
* Department of Psychology, Royal Holloway University of London. ** Wellbeing in Developing Countries ESRC Research Project (WeD), University of Bath.

Background: One challenge for the Wellbeing in Developing Countries (WeD) research programme has been to develop a way of studying quality of life that explores the social and cultural construction of people’s wellbeing in four developing countries. This study therefore describes validation of an individualised measure of quality of life (WeDQoL-Goals-Thailand), identifying scales/subscales and determining an appropriate scoring method.

Methods: 369 people in Thailand completed the 51-item WeDQoL by interview. Respondents rated (0-2) the perceived necessity for wellbeing of 51 goals (goal necessity), then rated (0-3) their satisfaction with the same goals (goal satisfaction). Weighted goal attainment (possible range 0-6) was computed as the product of necessity and satisfaction. Psychometric validation used frequency distributions, Principal Components Analysis (PCA), item-total correlations and Cronbach’s alpha. Analysis of variance, independent t-tests, Spearman’s correlation and multiple regression explored socio-demographic, geographic and economic differences in scale and subscale scores.

Results: Respondents were aged 15-89 (mean 45.7, sd 18.0); 169 men, 200 women. All completed the measure fully. Based on interviewers’ reports, seven items were excluded from analysis. For weighted goal attainment scores, PCA found a 44-item scale (alpha 0.91) and three subscales (community/social/health, alpha 0.90; house and home, alpha 0.80; nuclear family, alpha 0.81). Thai Individualised Goal Attainment (TIGA) scale and three subscales were computed as the mean of contributing weighted goal attainment scores, after excluding any goals considered ‘not necessary’ for the individual’s wellbeing. Scores differed according to age-group, gender, marital status, region, religion, location (rural, peri-urban, urban) and economic indicators. TIGA total scale scores were predicted by being older, married, living in the South and in a non-urban location.

Discussion and conclusions: The WeDQoL-Goals-Thailand has excellent psychometric properties. The individualised scale and three subscales reflect each person’s individual perspective and are sensitive to subgroup differences. Because the TIGA total scale score is computed from items including those relating to the nuclear family, scores are artificially depressed for younger people without a partner and children. Allowances can be made for this in analysis, or the subscale scores can be used to provide more detailed information about individual experiences of life in the community/social/health arena, the house and home and the nuclear family domains. Similar measures for Ethiopia, Bangladesh and Peru have rather different structures, but each includes a total individualised scale score that reflects both cultural and individual priorities for well-being.

Needs, Wants, and Wellbeing: Perceived Needs in Northeast and South Thailand

Laura Camfield, Allister McGregor, Alison Woodcock [email protected]

The paper explores the relationships between needs and wants both in theory and in the context of the reported perceived needs of people in the Northeast and South of Thailand. This debate is located in a wider discussion about what we mean by wellbeing, and whether it is a concept that can be of use both for our understanding of what people are seeking to achieve in processes of development and what policy-makers can and should be doing about it. Empirical research on needs satisfaction and subjective wellbeing in developing countries is reviewed, focusing particularly on studies eliciting local definitions and priorities. This supports the positive relationship between need satisfaction and wellbeing, and underlines the value of focusing on people's goals as broadly representative of their values and aspirations.

The paper then reports research conducted as part of the Wellbeing in Developing Countries ESRC Research Group's work in seven rural, peri-urban, and urban sites using open-ended and 'closed' questions to explore what men and women from a range of backgrounds and locations perceived as necessary to their happiness. It explores the degree of convergence between perceived needs captured through individualised methods, and those represented or implicit in influential 'universal' and 'local' models.

Finally, the paper concludes by discussing the potential role of measures of need satisfaction as proxies for wellbeing, and the role of the WeDQoL weighted goal attainment scale in particular as a cross-cultural measure of eudaimonic wellbeing. It cautions that while the WeDQoL can provide an accurate representation of people's subjective quality of life by enabling respondents to identify and prioritise the areas that contribute to their wellbeing, this is only part of the puzzle. It recommends that an integrated framework for exploring wellbeing incorporate objective and subjective measures of what people have, what they can do, and what they feel about what they have and can do.

Enhancing Poverty-Abatement Programs: A Subjective Well-Being Contribution

Mariano Herrera Rojas [email protected]

The Millennium Development Goals Declaration placed poverty at the centre of international development goals. In consequence, the abatement of poverty became the main motivation in the design of domestic policies by governments in developing countries and in the design of foreign-aid programs run by international organizations. Poverty abatement also constitutes a crucial performance indicator for local governments and international organizations. Although different poverty measures are computed (such as the percentage of people beneath a poverty line and FGT indices), the Millennium Development Goals implementation mostly follows an income-based conception of poverty; consequently, the main objective of poverty-abatement programs is to get people out of poverty by increasing their purchasing power.

In agreement with MDG's objectives, there has been a proliferation of poverty-abatement programs across Latin American countries. Of special relevance are conditional cash transfer programs, such as Oportunidades in Mexico and Avancemos in Costa Rica. The design and evaluation of these programs is based on the percentage of people who attain income levels beyond an income-based poverty line.

This paper studies the design and evaluation of poverty abatement programs in Latin America. It questions the implicit assumption that maintains that raising the income received by persons automatically translates into greater well-being. It uses a life-satisfaction conception of well-being and a domains-of-life approach to directly question this assumption and to propose well-being enhancing poverty-abatement programs. The paper shows that a subjective well-being approach can be useful in the design of poverty-abatement programs that not only help people to get out of poverty but also to place them in a life-satisfying situation. The paper also argues that subjective well-being indicators should be taken into consideration for the evaluation of poverty abatement programs.

Based on the longstanding tradition of the Leyden school (Goedhart, Halberstadt, Kapteyn, and van Praag, 1977; van Praag, Goedhart, and Kapteyn, 1980; van Praag, Spit, and van de Stadt, 1982; van Praag and Ferrer-i-Carbonell, 2004) the paper argues that it is important to conceive poverty as a situation where a person is in low well-being (Rojas 2006) and that a subjective well-being conception of poverty is useful for the design of well-being enhancing social programs. For this reason, the paper distinguishes between income poverty (being beneath the income poverty line) and well-being deprivation (being beneath a low life satisfaction level)

Based on a relatively large survey applied in central Mexico, as well as on another survey applied in Costa Rica, the paper empirically studies well-being patterns out of income poverty (Graph below illustrates these patterns)

The graph illustrates that it is possible for some people to follow a pattern that takes them out of income poverty while remaining in well-being deprivation. Persons can have more income, but it does not necessarily imply having greater life satisfaction. On the other hand, it is possible to follow a pattern that gets people out of income poverty while increasing their subjective well-being. The latter pattern (Pattern B) is highly desirable.

The paper shows that a complete understanding of these two patterns requires a study of other dimensions of life that have been neglected by traditional poverty-abatement programs. The consideration of other dimensions of life (beyond the economic dimension) and a better understanding of the relationship between income and all dimensions of life is fundamental for the design of well-being enhancing poverty-abatement programs. The empirical analysis shows that there is more in life than the standard of living, and that for many people there are more important domains.

The paper argues that to improve the well-being impact of poverty-abatement programs it is imperative to recognize: First, that persons are complex and that they derive their well-being from satisfaction in many domains of life. Second, that even though the economic domain of life is relevant, it does not determine life satisfaction. Third, that an improvement in income -and, perhaps, in economic satisfaction- is not necessarily accompanied by an increase in satisfaction in other crucial domains of life. Fourth, that it is possible to design programs that expand the positive impact of a raising income on life satisfaction. Fifth, that in order to enhance these poverty-abatement programs it is necessary to go beyond the economic domain of life to consider the impact of public policies in other domains. Sixth, that the sphere of public intervention should not be limited to those factors related to income generation alone.

The investigation ends up discussing some specific well-being enhancing policies to complement poverty-abatement programs. The paper concludes that it possible for public policy to get people out of income poverty while placing them in a life-satisfying situation.

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Towards a four tiered analysis of links between economic and subjective wellbeing indicators using data from Peru

James Copestake, Wan-Jung Chou, Monica Guillen Royo, Tim Hinks, Jackeline Velazco [email protected]

The central purpose of this chapter is to compare how people are classified according to standard economic welfare measures with indicators of how they themselves think and feel. The introduction includes a brief review of secondary literature linking the two in Peru. Data is then presented for each site on resources, income, expenditure, consumption and poverty at the household level. Selected economic and demographic indicators are then compared statistically with (a) an index of global happiness (d) subjective wellbeing indicators derived from the WeDQoL. The conclusion suggests scope for a four tiered analysis of variation in subjective wellbeing that distinguishes between individual, intra-household, household and supra-household effects.

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