Subjective Well-being Is The Essence Of Well-being. Discuss.

This essay aims to support the idea that subjective wellbeing is the essence of wellbeing. It aims to cover four separate, but linked, factors that suggest that this is the case. Firstly, that children and young people are capable of providing meaningful assessments of their own wellbeing. Secondly, that they can provide insights into their wellbeing which adults may miss which are key to their overall wellbeing. Thirdly that an individual s perception of themselves within their circumstances directly affects their wellbeing, and finally, that quantitative measures of subjective wellbeing can provide a vital link between objective, structural accounts of wellbeing and subjective individual accounts of wellbeing to provide a more holistic account of wellbeing, that is key to our understanding of wellbeing.

Subjective well-being is an important aspect of wellbeing because it tells us about an individual s experience from their perspective. This means that it can provide insight into a person s life which may be overlooked by simply looking at external factors of their lives, and can contextualise the idea of well being so that it is grounded within a person s reality, instead of what someone else may assume is the case. This is of particular importance to research involving children and young people, as it is often assumed by adults that children and young people have too limited an understanding of their world to be able to provide meaningful assessments of their own wellbeing. However, when consulted in a way which is accessible, or child centred, children and young people have been able to provide meaningful

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assessments of their wellbeing and their lives, and give researchers important insights into their realities that may have previously been overlooked or misunderstood.

This is displayed in research around child wellbeing in developed countries such as in the Irish National Children s Office research that produced seven socio-demographic indicators intended to be used to monitor the well being of children in Ireland. Around 250 children were given cameras to take pictures of things that were important to them, and described why, then a second group of children categorised them. A third group identified relationships between the categories, and a fourth group developed a model of child well being which displayed the varying degree of importance of the different categories. (Fig1.)

Fig. 1 Source Bradshaw, Jonathan, Petra Hoelscher and Dominic Richardson (2007), Comparing Child Well-Being in OECD Countries: Concepts and Methods . Innocenti Working Paper No. 2006-03. Florence, UNICEF Innocenti Research Centre

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This is important because it informs researchers of aspects of a child s wellbeing that may be missed by adults, for example, pets were ranked highly in the model, and had not been considered before. (Bradshaw et al 2007) This gives a broader view of what may impact a child s wellbeing than what would have be considered if the researchers had not involved children s subjective view of what impacts their well being.

Another example of this is the findings of the Young Lives project. This aims to cover the years 2000-2015, using survey based data to follow 12,000 children living in poverty in Ethiopia, Peru, Andra Pradesh (India) and Vietnam. Within it is a qualitative sub-study following 200 of these children, ages 6/7 and 12/13, that uses child centred participatory based methods. It found that the children could give in depth, considered accounts of their own wellbeing, and their opinions of the concept of well being, if they were asked in a way that they found to be understandable and engaging. (Crivello, et al 2008.)

The study used various methods of collecting data which were both child centred and participatory, including group discussions, draw and tell exorcises, body mapping and life course timelines. The results show that children identified a similar range of external indicators of well being, as adults who were also asked about their views of child well being, such as being clean and well fed. They also identified more abstract internal indicators of well being and ill being such as generosity, mediation skills and destructive behaviours or consistently negative emotions. Furthermore, children showed an understanding of the impacts of big issues that affect wider

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society, such as Ethiopian children showing concern over the HIV/AIDs epidemic. (Crivello, et al 2008.)

This is important because it may subvert many adult expectations of both children s capacities to understand bigger issues, but also displays that these issues directly impact upon their internal wellbeing. Children also displayed fears of imaginary horrors that gave them nightmares that may be a more expected response, but these ran alongside fears of personal, local and national issues such as young marriage, drugs and alcohol problems in their neighbourhoods and environmental catastrophes. (Crivello, et al 2008.) Therefore the focus of the research on the subjective views of the children themselves gives researchers an understanding of what impacts children internally and externally from the children s perspective.

It also demonstrates that the use of subjective wellbeing measures can be effective across different age ranges, developed and developing countries and that the concept can be translated across different cultures. The research team had some problems with translating the concept across all areas, but generally managed to communicate the idea well enough to receive meaningful responses from all of the participants. (Crivello, et al 2008.) This is important because it displays the universality of the benefits of using subjective measures, not only to make the point that children can provide insight into their wellbeing as well as adults, but that vulnerable children are just as capable, if they are empowered to do so.

This is further demonstrated by a study carried out with children with mental health issues which aimed to gain an insight into the children and young people s subjective well being and to identify a more accessible way to research the

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experiences of this vulnerable group. Similarly to Young Lives, the researchers wanted to avoid imposing their views of the children and young people s well being into the research as far as possible. The sample was 53 children ranging from age 5-18 years from one small private psychiatric hospital in the US. They used a mixture of quantitative and qualitative methods to gain responses, in the forms of a survey of 23 questions that used a Likert scale and an interview containing four open ended questions. They varied the style of the questions depending upon the age group of the child to make it more accessible and used smiley or sad faces as a Likert scale for the younger children for the same reason. (Clarke et al 2007)

The results showed that within the interview the nonverbal behaviours (of the children) indicated the depth of their involvement ( p.9 Clarke et al 2007) and that information was gained in a variety of areas that were previously unknown to staff and sometimes parents, particularly around the child s depth of feeling ( p.9 Clarke et al 2007) concerning their situations. One particularly salient example was that one child who was believed to be happily living with his grandparents instead of his parents, responded that to make his life better, he wanted To be with my parents! (p.9 Clarke et al 2007) Again, this not only demonstrates that children and young people are capable of providing meaningful responses when asked about their subjective wellbeing, but that vital information concerning exactly how their wellbeing is impacted by their view of their circumstances can be missed if adults make assumptions based upon their own views.

Therefore, these studies appear to indicate that children and young people

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can reliably give meaningful accounts of their own wellbeing, and give insights that may not previously have been considered by adults. However, subjective accounts of wellbeing providing a meaningful contribution to our understanding of wellbeing, is not the same as subjective wellbeing as the essence of wellbeing. For that to be true, subjective wellbeing would need to be pivotal in influencing an individual s outcomes.

A study looking into outcomes for young people with parents who are addicted to drugs and/or alcohol indicates that this may be the case. The participants were 19 young people who had one or both parents who were or had been addicted to drugs or alcohol. They were all living in Israel but came from diverse backgrounds (Jews and Arabs girls and boys immigrants and veteran Israelis). (p.452, Ronel and Haimoff-Ayali, 2009)

The study was qualitative based around an interview with the participant, which began as an open ended conversation and further questions were based around the information revealed by the participant concerning their experiences and perceptions. The results divided the participants into two groups, one group of 10 where the participants had managed to maintain a normative life without drug abuse (p.452, Ronel and Haimoff-Ayali, 2009) and another group of 9 who had abused drugs in the past or still did 8 of these having serious problems with their addiction and one who s use was occasional. (Ronel and Haimoff-Ayali, 2009)

The results indicated a link between the outcomes for the young people as

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addicts or non-addicts and their subjective perceptions of themselves related to their parents. It was found that the individual s perception of the balance of power between themselves and the parents, particularly in relation to the addicted parent and the non-addicted parent, could be identified as either a risk factor or a protective factor in regard to their behaviour around drug use. Within this division

of forces, (self father mother) the one the adolescent perceives as strongest has the most salient influence on his or her direction in life. (p.459, Ronel and Haimoff-Ayali, 2009)

Amongst the young people who lead a normative life, it appeared that they perceived the non-addicted parent as strong and the addicted parent as weak, and importantly, identified with the strong non-addicted parent as like themselves. This appeared to enable the young person to seek and achieve a normative lifestyle despite the risk associated with having an addicted parent. Alternatively, as an example of one participant given the name Ortal displays, the young person may perceive both the addicted and the non-addicted parent as weak, but themselves as strong, and identifies with neither but separates themselves from the weak parents. This disassociation appeared to enable Ortal to seek and achieve a normative lifestyle as she perceived the balance of power to be in her favour, creating a protective factor. (Ronel and Haimoff-Ayali, 2009)

Furthermore, amongst the group who had displayed problem drug use, the opposite was the case, in that the young person perceived the addicted parent to be strong and sometimes identified with them, and perceived the non-addicted parent to

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be weak, and disassociated themselves from them. The young person may also identify themselves as weak in relation to the strong addicted parent. This appears to suggest that the perception of the addicted parent as strong as a risk factor associated with the young person s problem drug use. (Ronel and Haimoff-Ayali, 2009)

This is an important concept to be explored as it displays the possibility that the young person s subjective views on the balance of power between themselves and their parents as influential on their wellbeing. The key factor identified may be that the strongest correlation appears to be between the young person s subjective opinion of the power relationship between themselves, their addicted parent and their non-addicted parent. This supports the idea that subjective wellbeing is important as this study suggests that it is the young person s subjective perception of the power balance that increases or curtails the possible risk trajectory associated with the risk factor of having an addicted parent. If this is true then it provides a strong case for subjective wellbeing as the essence of wellbeing, as it may provide a critical protective factor for that young person, and influence outcomes for that young person s wellbeing at present and in the future.

However, within all these cases there are a number of issues that may prevent the conclusion that subjective wellbeing is this pivotal, and can give us reliable information on outcomes for children and young people. Firstly, the qualitative nature of the research previously described means that the results cannot be generalised to the population as a whole, as the samples are not representative.

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Secondly, further research would need to be done to establish a causal relationship between the individual s perception and the outcome displayed. Also, within all of these cases there is also the issue of reports of subjective measures of wellbeing being separate from any reports of objective measures of wellbeing. This means that researchers are gathering data on how people perceive their circumstances and wellbeing are, but that is purely at an individual level, and may not take into account structural factors that heavily influence the circumstances of the people being studied, and through their circumstances, their wellbeing.

What this may mean is that research using subjective wellbeing measures within quantitative research may be able to provide an important link between results of outcomes identified using qualitative research around subjective wellbeing measures, and outcomes identified using quantitative research around objective wellbeing measures. The combination could then provide a more holistic account of children and young people s wellbeing that may combine an understanding of structural factors gained from objective quantitative research, and individual factors gained from qualitative research.

An example of this can be gained from research around children s wellbeing in Europe comparing educational attainment with educational enjoyment. It could be argued that educational attainment is an objective measure of children and young people s wellbeing that tells us about structural factors of wellbeing. This is because attainment indicates that a child is succeeding in their education, so doing well. Also, the education system is a social construct aimed to get children to gain knowledge

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