What is wellbeing and what does it mean for science

communication?

Saamah AbdallahJohn HaworthChair: Amy Sanders

#SciComm14Free #SciComm14

Happiness and Well-being

John Haworth. Visiting Professor in Well-being, University of Bolton & Visiting Research Fellow, Manchester

Metropolitan University. UK www.haworthjt.com

haworthjt@yahoo.com

British Science Association

Science Communication Conference

1st- 2nd May. University of Surrey, Guildford. UK

Mass Observation

WORKTOWN www.worktown.bolton.ac.uk/worktown.

Bolton was chosen as “representative of the industrial life pattern which prevails for the majority of people in Britain”

More can be seen about Mass Observation and Worktown at The Centre for Worktown Studies, University of Bolton. www.bolton.ac.uk/worktown. And Humphrey Spender’s Worktown at http://spender.boltonmuseums.org.uk

The research used photography very innovatively, in particular by Humphrey Spender, to record the life and times of Bolton, and written accounts of life and happiness made by the people of Bolton, responding to a “Competitions” Survey organised by the Bolton Evening News.

The survey has been repeated recently by the Bolton News, in collaboration with Sandie McHugh and Jerome Carson at the Department of Psychology, University of Bolton. It included a request for respondents to rank in order 10 factors important for true happiness. Explanations of the original wording were included.

1938 – 10 aspects of happiness1938 – 10 aspects of happiness

discourse /explanation for 2014discourse /explanation for 2014

More equality More politics

More equality in wealth More say in political decisions

More beauty More religion

More attractive living & working environment

More religious influence in society

More leadership More good humour

More direction from local & national decision makers

More smiling and laughter for myself & those around me

More leisure More knowledge

More time to do the things I enjoy

More access and opportunities to learn new things

More economic security More action

More certainty for maintaining & maybe improving my living standards

More action to solve not shelve my problems

The survey also included a question on enjoyment, similar to the one used by the ONS.

280 completed questionnaires are on the Bolton News website (awaiting analysis). 86 completed paper questionnaires have been given an initial analysis by Sandie McHugh, and compared with the1938 survey. This showed that

The three most important aspects of happiness in Worktown

1938 2014

More Security Security

More Knowledge Good Humour

More Religion Equality

Worktown to Cottonopolis

The Centre for Worktown Studies, Directed by Bob Snape,organised a day long workshop, open to the general public,on the 29 March 2014.

This included presentations on the Mass Observation Worktown Archive; and the Bolton News Happiness Research.

It also involved repeating the original journey from Bolton to Cottonopolis (Manchester), with the award winning cartoonist Tony Husband (Private Eye, The Times), with participants invited to become a Mass Observer for the Day. Participants were also invited to complete a ‘Hands On’ project, involving drawing round their hand on a piece of A4 paper, and writing the number of each of six questions on subjective well being, including Happiness, and the numerically coded answer. A poster will be made and placed on the website www.creativity-embodiedmind.com It will be similar to one made at a Workshop at an invited Conference on ‘Aesthetics and Embodied Mind’ at Delmenhorst, Germany, organised by Alfonsina Scarinsi. The poster can be seen in the gallery at the above website.

A presentation was also made at the Manchester Histories Festival Celebration Day.

Well-being has been viewed variously as happiness, satisfaction, enjoyment, contentment, engagement, fulfilment, resilience, and flourishing. Well-being is also viewed as a process, something we do together, and as sense making, rather than just a state of being. It is acknowledged that in life as a whole there will be periods of ill-being, and that these may add richness to life. It has also been recognised that well-being and the environment are intimately interconnected.

Certainly, well-being is seen to be complex and multifaceted, and may take different forms (Haworth, J.T. & Hart, G. (eds) (2012) Well-Being: Individual, Community and Social Perspectives. Basingstoke UK: Palgrave Macmillan).

Happiness and well-being are now crucial topics for research and policy in many countries; and a movement for happiness has been established www.movementforhappiness.org/movement-manifesto

The New Economics Foundation www.neweconomics.org considers that sustainable well-being should be at the forefront of government policy.

BOLTON WELL-BEINGBOLTON WELL-BEING 

Well-BeingWell-Being

While the results for Bolton of the National Well-being Survey by the ONS do not feature in some of the worst in England, there are greater percentages of people in the lower (negative) end of the scale for Life Satisfaction, Happiness, and Feeling Things in Life are Worthwhile, than in Greater Manchester and the UK taken as a whole.

• For Life Satisfaction and Happiness there is a greater percentage in the positive end of the scales for Bolton than for Greater Manchester and the UK.

• The Life Satisfaction and Happiness scales are thus more unequal in Bolton than for Greater Manchester and the UK.

• There is a greater percentage of people with very low anxiety in Bolton than in Greater Manchester and the UK

The monthly Opinion Survey conducted in August 2011 by the ONS included a measure of enjoyment, which has been shown to be important for well-being (Haworth and Hart 2012), and other aspects of experience, as well as the four overall measures of wellbeing.

The question on enjoyment asked: ‘Overall how much enjoyment did you experience yesterday?’ answered on a 10 point scale from 0 no enjoyment at all to 10 as much enjoyment as possible.

The mean rating was 6.4, compared to a mean rating of 7.4 to the question ‘Overall how happy did you feel yesterday’. Enjoyment correlated 0.58 with happiness.

For enjoyment, nearly 20% had a rating of under 5, while 35% or more had a rating of between 8 and 10.

Obviously there are significant differences in enjoyment amongst sections of the population. It would be valuable to analyse in more detail how enjoyment is distributed amongst the population by variables such as age, gender, employment/unemployment, income, and geographical place. Results for BoltonResults for Bolton

Measuring National Well-Measuring National Well-BeingBeing

EnjoymenEnjoyment

Currently in the UK, at the behest of the UK Government, the Office of National Statistics (ONS) (www.ons.gov.uk) is developing new measures of national well-being. The aim is that these new measures will cover the quality of life of people in the UK, environmental and sustainability issues, as well as the economic performance of the country. The ONS has added four questions to its annual Integrated Household Survey. These are: •Overall, how satisfied are you with your life nowadays?•Overall, how happy did you feel yesterday•Overall, how anxious did you feel yesterday•Overall, to what extent do you feel the things you do in your life are worthwhile? The questions are answered on a scale from 0-10. Smaller surveys addressing other aspects of well-being are being conducted each month. Initially, results will be regarded as experimental to see if the questions work, and that they meet public policy and other needs, including international developments.

Children’s GraffitiBolton Open

Bolton Lads and Girls Club

Atlantic Rowers Arriving Antigua

John Haworth Visiting Professor of Well-Being University of Bolton

Bowls Bolton Open Bolton Shopping Market

West Pennine moors

Bolton Museum’s Humphrey Spender’s Worktown Collection

Bolton Town Hall

Happiness Questionnaire 2014

University of Bolton

HANDS ON

Several key concepts relating to well-being have been identified in the introduction to book by Haworth and Hart 2007/ 2012, available on the website www.wellbeing-esrc.com

These include the following:Well-being has been viewed variously as happiness, satisfaction,

enjoyment, contentment; engagement, fulfilment and flourishing

Well-being is also viewed as a process, something we do together, and as sense making, rather than just a state of being.

Well-being is seen to be complex and multifaceted, and may take different forms.

Well-being is now being investigated in the UK by the Office for National Statistics www.ons.gov.uk/ drawing on national and local surveys using questions comparable with research in other countries.

An empirical model of well-being.

Nine situational or environmental factors, termed Principal Environmental Influences (PEI’S) have been proposed by Warr, (1987) as important for well-being. They include the five categories of experience identified by Jahoda, provided as latent consequencies of employment, showing the importance of social institutions for well-being.

These features of the environment, such as opportunity for control, externally generated goals, opportunity for interpersonal contact, are considered to interact with characteristics of the person to facilitate or constrain psychological well-being or mental health.

Research by Haworth and colleagues shows strong associations between each of the nine factors and measures of mental health.

An important development of the model shows the importance of enjoyment for well-being.

The research is published in Journals referenced in the book: J.T. Haworth (1997) Work, Leisure and Well-being. London: Routledge; Taylor and Francis (2006).

The book has been republished by Taylor and Francis (2006).

The research was done using the Experience Sampling Method, and path analysis. The study suggested that enjoyment and feelings of control might enhance locus of control, which in turn may lead to enhanced well-being either directly or through greater access to PEIs. The Office of National Statistics (ONS) in the UK in its ‘Approach to measuring well-being’ is ‘Aiming to build a deeper understanding of how internal psychological factors and personal attributes can mediate external determinants and contributions of individual well-being’.

The ESM traditionally uses questionnaire diaries and electronic pagers which are pre-programmed to bleep at randomly selected times during the day to indicate response times, though recent research has used mobile phones (see later).

The ESM in this project, conducted over seven consecutive days, involved a series of short questions answered on a card, at a signal from the pager eight times during the day. The questions were on activity, enjoyment, interest, challenge, skills, and happiness.

Questionnaires are used to measure the PEI’S and some aspects of well-being, and Locus of Control.

The results from the study by Haworth, Jarman, and Lee (1997) showed that several of the PEIs were associated with measures of well-being; and that locus of control was associated with measures of well-being, with internal locus of control individuals having better scores. Internal locus of control individuals also had better scores on several PEIs; and also greater levels of enjoyment, interest and control, and wished to be doing activities more than external locus of control individuals, measured over the week of the study. Path analysis showed that for some measures of well-being, locus of control had a greater indirect effect on well-being through the PEIs than a direct effect.

Rotter (1966,1990) emphasises that locus of control is a learned expectancy, rather than a fixed trait. Furnham and Steele (1993) note that while locus of control beliefs may influence experience, the reverse may also be true. They suggest that positive successful life experiences probable increase internal locus of control beliefs through optimistic attributions. These may increase confidence, initiative and positive motivation, and thus lead to more successful experiences.

Rotter (1982) indicates the possible importance of ‘enhancement behaviours’, which he viewed as ‘specific cognitive activities that are used by internals to enhance and maintain good feelings’.

However, Uleman and Bargh (1989) also indicate the importance of subconscious processes in wellbeing

Merleau-Ponty (1962) in his Embodiment theory of consciousness indicates the importance of both non-reflective and reflective interactions in Being (see Haworth 2000) This is reflected in current theories of ‘situated cognition’ emphasising the intertwining of the situation and cognition. ( e.g. M. Wilson (2002) Six Views of Embodied Cognition. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, Volume 6, Issue 4, pp625-636

Conceivably, positive subjective states could influence person factors, such as dispositions, coping styles and life themes etc, through both reflective and non -reflective interactions. In turn, person factors could influence well-being directly, or indirectly through access to situational factors important for well-being.

Enjoyment, Flow and Well-being, in Work and Leisure

Haworth, J.T.(2004) Work, Leisure and Well-Being in (eds) J.T. Haworth, and A.J.Veal. Work and Leisure. London: Routledge.

Haworth, J.T. (2014) ‘Leisure, Life, Enjoyment and Well-Being’ In (eds) S. Elkington and J. Gammon. Contemporary Perspectives in Leisure: Meanings, Motives and Lifelong-Learning’ Oxford: OUP

Seligman and Csikszentmihalyi (2000) distinguish between pleasure and enjoyment . They note that

‘--- Enjoyment, rather than pleasure, is what leads to personal growth and long term happiness’

In a pioneering study, Csikszentmihalyi (1975) set out to understand enjoyment in its own terms and to describe what makes an activity enjoyable. He found that when artists, athletes and creative professionals were asked to describe the best times experienced in their favourite activities they all mentioned a dynamic balance between opportunity and ability as crucial. Optimal experience, or ‘flow’ as some of the respondents’ described it, could be differentiated from states of boredom, in which there is less to do than what one is capable of, and from anxiety, which occurs when things to do are more than one can cope with.

Extensive research has shown that enjoyable flow, where activities of moderate to high challenge are met with equal skill, can come from both work and leisure, and that this correlates with measures of well-being. High enjoyment can also come from low challenge activities, and be important for well-being

Well-being and the public

Science Communication ConferenceUniversity of Surrey, 2nd May 2014

Saamah AbdallahCentre for Well-beingnef (the new economics foundation)

Dynamic model of well-being

Good feelings day-to-day and overall

e.g. happiness, joy, contentment, satisfaction

Good functioning and satisfaction of needs

e.g. to be autonomous, competent, safe and secure, connected to

others

Personal Resources

e.g. health, resilience, optimism, self-esteem,

External Conditions

e.g. material conditions, work and productivity,

income (levels and stability)

Adapted from Foresight (2008)

Understanding progress

Happy Planet Index, 2006

Top four factors associated with well-being

• Material deprivation• Health & disability• Work-life balance• Social relationships

Based on European Quality of Life Survey 2011

Five ways to wellbeing

Evidence-based actions that are memorable, easy to understand and have a wide variety of possible applications

So what’s the problem?

When folk science gets involved

Psychology – the challenges of telling people about themselves

Sciencewise – EmbeddingWell-being in policy making

• Workshops with groups of the public about real policy issues

• Informed by well-being science, but light on use of term ‘well-being’

• Two workshop process – one where options are opened, one where they are closed down by policy constraints

• Three topics:– Community Rights– Loneliness– Active Labour Market Policy

• Different contribution in different contexts

Saamah Abdallahwww.neweconomics.org

saamah.abdallah@neweconomics.org

@nefwellbeing

The perfect policy?

Well-being =