Understanding and improving well-being requires a sound evidence base that can inform policy-makers and citizens alike where, when, and for whom life is getting better. These Guidelines have been produced under the OECD’s Better Life Initiative – a pioneering project launched in 2011, which aims to measure society’s progress across eleven domains of well-being, ranging from income, jobs, health, skills and housing, through to civic engagement and the environment. Subjective well-being – i.e. how people think about and experience their lives – is an important component of this overall framework. To be most useful to governments and other decision-makers, however, subjective well-being data need to be collected with large and representative samples and in a consistent way across different population groups and over time.

This report is published under the responsibility of the Secretary-General of the OECD. The opinions expressed and arguments employed herein do not necessarily reflect the official views of the Organisation or of the governments of its member countries.

These guidelines provide advice on the collection and use of measures of subjective well-being. They are intended to provide support for national statistical offices and other producers of subjective well-being data in designing, collecting, and publishing measures of subjective well-being. In addition, the guidelines are designed to be of value to users of information on subjective well-being.

Notions of subjective well-being or happiness have a long tradition as central elements of quality of life, but until very recently these concepts were generally deemed beyond the scope of statistical measurement. Over the last two decades, however, an increasing body of evidence has shown that subjective well-being can be measured in surveys, that such measures are valid and reliable, and that they can usefully inform policy-making. This evidence has been reflected in an exponential growth in the economic literature on measures of subjective well-being.During the 1990s there was an average of less than five articles on happiness or related subjects each year in the journals covered by the Econlit database. By 2008 this had risen to over fifty.

The main focus of this chapter is to set the conceptual scope for the measurement of subjective well-being and to provide an overview of what is currently known about the statistical quality of subjective well-being measures. The chapter covers what is meant by subjective well-being, its relevance and why it should be measured, and reviews the evidence on the validity of different types of subjective well-being measure.

The goal of the present chapter is to outline the available evidence on how survey methodology can affect subjective well-being measures and draw together what is currently known about good practice. The chapter focuses on aspects of survey design and methodology and is organised around five main themes: i) question construction; ii) response formats; iii) question context; iv) survey mode effects and wider survey context effects; and v) response styles and the cultural context in which a survey takes place. Each section is structured around the key measurement issues raised, the evidence regarding their impact, and the implications this has for survey methodology.

This chapter aims to present best practice in measuring subjective well-being. It covers both the range of concepts to be measured and the best approaches for measuring them. This includes considering issues of sample design, survey design, data processing and coding and questionnaire design. In particular, the chapter presents a single primary measure intended to be collected consistently across countries, as well as a small group of core measures that it is desirable for data producers to collect where possible. Beyond this core suite of measures, the chapter provides more general advice to support data producers interested in identifying and measuring aspects of subjective well-being that will meet their particular research or policy needs, as well as a range of question modules relating to different aspects of subjective well-being.

This chapter provides guidance regarding the release and use of subjective well-being data. It briefly re-caps the policy and public interest in the data (outlined in , Concept and validity), before covering how information can be reported and analysed. This includes the statistical outputs that may be released; basic information about the methods of analysis that may be adopted; and a discussion of key interpretive issues, placing particular emphasis on the extent to which levels of subjective well-being can be expected to vary in different circumstances.

i) The Cantril Ladder, or Cantril’s Ladder of Life Scale, as adopted in the Gallup World Poll (Bjørnskov, 2010):

This module is intended to provide a minimal set of measures of subjective well-being covering both life evaluation and affect that could be included in household surveys. The core measures included here are the measures for which there is the strongest evidence for their validity and relevance, and for which international comparability is the most important. An experimental measure of an aspect of eudaimonic well-being is also included.