Defining Wellbeing

Allan McNaught

Learning outcomes

In this chapter you will learn how to:

• develop working definitions of wellbeing within a framework that will enable you to capture the complexity of the concept;

• compare and contrast the scope and the different components of wellbeing;

• identify the critical connections and interdependencies between the different components of wellbeing.

This chapter seeks to explore wellbeing as a free-standing, multilevelled and complex social construct. The chapter will argue that 'health' is but one component of wellbeing and, while the customary coupling extends 'health' to encompass the emotional and the psychological (and maybe even 'holistic'), it pre-empts our understanding and debates about 'wellbeing'. Wellbeing is a complex, confusing and contested field that would benefit from a framework within which to locate more specific definitions, and to tease out interconnections and cross-cutting issues. The prime objective of this chapter is to give readers of this book a steer by providing a definitional topography for the concept of wellbeing. By providing such a framework, this chapter seeks to make a contribution towards the thinking and discourse about wellbeing, and to assist the reader in locating the individual chapters within a broader context, while also recognising their boundaries/limitations.

INTRODUCTION

Concern with wellbeing has generated a considerable body of literature and research on its many facets and meanings. There is an increasing acceptance that so-called 'objective' measures of social and economic progress are insufficient to analyse and describe human wellbeing, whether at an individual, family, community or societal level. Wellbeing is a feel-good concept that has occupied our 'assumptive world'; it is a concept that is freely used in modern policy discourse, and has become an integral objective in many policy domains, usually without explicit definition. No one seriously opposes this development, although some commentators are amused at the onward march of 'happiness science'. The volume of literature, the elasticity of the concept, and its steady incorporation into the national political and social policy agenda, suggest that the concern and the issues demand serious attention by those concerned with human health and social welfare.

Wellbeing as a concept is frequently coupled with 'health', as in the term 'health and wellbeing'. It will be argued that wellbeing is a broader construct that has a certain moral and philosophical energy: it facilitates reflection on the human condition and provides the backdrop to public policy making and research aimed at the promotion of wellbeing as a desirable state. Therefore, wellbeing is conceptualised as an ideal state of being or existence that we and policy makers strive for, as a contemporary variant of the good life.

Background

The word 'wellbeing' has slipped into our day-to-day discussions, including in 'pop psychology', a range of social policy domains and various fields of academic research. There are competing and contradictory definitions in the literature and some works about wellbeing discuss it extensively, though without actually defining it, or claiming that a definition is impossible. Even when the term is used it is sometimes not clear if it is something profound or just a linguistic flourish. Figure 1.1 shows some of the linguistic issues with the use of the term 'wellbeing'.

Most contemporary discussions of wellbeing start from the WHO definition that 'health is not the mere absence of diseases, but a state of wellbeing' (WHO, 1947). This early coupling has led to a tradition of health being regarded as the province of biomedicine and objectivity, while wellbeing was associated with emotional and psychological states, or subjective wellbeing, and the growth of a specific body of literature concerned with measuring wellbeing as a psychological construct, as outlined in Chapter 6. The individualisation and internalisation of wellbeing is also expressed in the recent development of positive psychology or 'happiness science'. Interestingly, within the construction of wellbeing as a psychological, subjective phenomenon, some objective elements are usually cited, relating to familial, community and social factors, the built environment and the individual's command over or access to resources. That being said, subjective wellbeing is important in that it tries to encapsulate a notion of how people cope, thrive and survive, individually and collectively.

However, wellbeing can be assessed as both an objective and subjective construct. Because of the complexity of the concept, wellbeing measurement must recognise its multifactorial nature and the need for a range of tools and disciplines, as well as social and policy changes, to be involved in its promotion, measurement and expression. Clearly, some of these instruments will be less validated than others, but this should not detract from the overall integrity of the concept and the approach. For example, an assessment of how well or happy people feel, as individuals or as societies, has been demonstrated by the psychological wellbeing literature (see Chapter 6). Diener and Seligman (2004) have argued that social policy formulation should take subjective wellbeing into account, and should also attempt to monitor it on a longitudinal basis to inform policy. Subjective wellbeing has also been taken up by economists, and transformed into the 'Quality of Life' concept. Quality of life usually refers to the degree to which a person's life is desirable versus undesirable, often with an emphasis on external components such as environmental factors and income. In contrast to subjective wellbeing, which is based on inner/psychological experiences, quality of life is often expressed as more 'objective' and describes the circumstances of a person's life rather than his or her reaction to those circumstances.

Clearly, the quality of life concept brings another dimension to our consideration of wellbeing, and illustrates the obvious shortcoming of subjective wellbeing. By so doing, it makes the point that it might be more realistic to view wellbeing as a field of study that encompasses a range of specialist areas of research and practice aimed at understanding and promoting a positive state of existence in specific domains and for specific populations or socio-economic and political entities. We are only able to make sense of the varied literature and competing definitions by taking a broader approach that contextualises and incorporates operational definitions, such as happiness, quality of life, and objective and subjective wellbeing. Because of this complexity, the search for a generally accepted definition of wellbeing is fruitless, frustrating and ultimately impossible.

These concepts have also been extended to the societal level, with the King of Bhutan suggesting the development of a Gross Happiness Index (GHI) to replace Gross National Product (GNP) as an index of national wellbeing. President Sarkozy of France has been the first developed-country politician to formally adopt this approach, with the commissioning of a group led by the economist Joseph Stiglitz to develop happiness measures for France. Also, according to Stratton (2010), 'The UK government is poised to start measuring people's psychological and environmental wellbeing, bidding to be among the first countries to officially monitor happiness.' Concepts and definitions of wellbeing can therefore be perceived to be wrapped around the whole structure of humanity and its social and ecological existence. The next section will attempt to outline a 'definitional framework for the concept of wellbeing'. This will provide a framework for more specific definitions and provide an overall framework for understanding the concept of wellbeing.

AN OVERVIEW OF THE FIELD OF STUDY

For Felce and Perry (1995), wellbeing '... comprises objective descriptors and subjective evaluations of physical, material, social and emotional wellbeing, together with the extent of personal development and purposeful activity, all weighted by a personal set of values' (Felce and Perry, 1995, p. 60). For Bentham (1817) 'Directly or indirectly, wellbeing, in some shape or other ... is the subject of every thought, and object of every action, on the part of every known Being ... nor can any intelligible reason be given for desiring that it should be otherwise' (Bentham, 1817, p. 79).

Figure 1.2 shows what I term a definitional framework for the concept of wellbeing. At this level, wellbeing is a macro concept or an area of study concerned with the objective and subjective assessment of how human beings survive, thrive and function.

The importance of this framework is that it extends the definition and concept of wellbeing to a range of different dimensions beyond individual subjectivity, and removes the conventional linking with 'health' to include the family, community and society as a whole. It also repositions and broadens the factors identified with individual wellbeing.

This model presents wellbeing as a dynamic process that gives people a sense of how their lives are going, through the interaction between their circumstances, activities and psychological resources, and includes their interpersonal interactions with significant social formations (the family and their community) within society. It is important that individuals, families and communities are not conceptualised as passive actors to whom others deliver wellbeing as a product. Wellbeing is also a result of their own actions and their own social and political preferences and interventions to change their circumstances and to influence the governance of their society to support what they perceive to be 'good'.

As a result of this dynamism, high levels of wellbeing and consciousness about what wellbeing might mean give the motivation and capacity to respond to difficult circumstances, to innovate, challenge and constructively engage with other people and the world around us. As well as representing a highly effective way of bringing about good outcomes in many different areas our lives, there is also a strong case for regarding wellbeing as an ultimate goal of human endeavour, as indicated by Bentham's quote above.

Individual wellbeing

This area has been the focus of much of the theorising and research on wellbeing. Diener (2005), particularly, has researched and written extensively on all aspects of wellbeing. He has defined subjective wellbeing as

all of the various types of evaluations, both positive and negative, that people make of their lives. It includes reflective cognitive evaluations, such as life satisfaction and work satisfaction, interest and engagement, and affective reactions to life events, such as joy and sadness. Thus, subjective wellbeing is an umbrella term for the different valuations people make regarding their lives, the events happening to them, their bodies and minds, and the circumstances in which they live. (Diener, p. 2)

Individual wellbeing, by its nature, is a multidimensional concept and there has been a multitude of definitions as to what it might mean. Within the literature there is a variation between those who are predisposed to the measurement of attitudes or attributes, and those who link these subjective feelings with certain defined social situations. Robinson (2010), for example, identified the following five categories of wellbeing as essential to everyone:

• career wellbeing: how you occupy your time - or simply liking what you do every day;

• social wellbeing: having strong relationships and love in your life;

• financial wellbeing: effectively managing your economic life;

• physical wellbeing: having good health and enough energy to get things done on a daily basis;

• community wellbeing: the sense of engagement you have with the area where you live.

It is notable that Robinson's taxonomy does not explicitly mention the family, although this can, by inference, be included in 'social wellbeing', while 'community wellbeing' is perceived purely in terms of relationships. These varying concepts of wellbeing have been augmented by studies of happiness; and happiness has been posited as the ultimate form of individual wellbeing.

In Figure 1.2, individual wellbeing is shown to be influenced by a combination of physical, psychological, spiritual/moral and social factors. Most instruments that attempt to measure individual wellbeing or quality of life try to capture the impact of these factors on the individual's subjective experience (internal world). The framework also suggests that individual wellbeing is conditioned by the nature of the context in which the individual is situated and can only be understood within that context.

Family wellbeing

Paraphrasing Diener (2005), family wellbeing refers to all of the various types of evaluations, both positive and negative, that a family make of their lives. It includes reflective cognitive evaluations, such as life satisfaction and work satisfaction, interest and engagement, the quality of interpersonal and intergenerational relationships, family access to economic and other resources, and the overall circumstances in which they live (Diener, 2005, p. 2).

Individual and family wellbeing are strongly related; most individuals live within the context of a family (however defined), and the quality of personal relationships and the access to physical and other resources are generally a feature of personal and family wellbeing. These resources are many and varied – child care, caring for the disabled, pooling resources for day-to-day living, providing or facilitating economic opportunities for family members – and these are all part of the resources that promote wellbeing.

Concern with family functioning and family wellbeing has been an enduring feature of social policy, but what does this actually mean? Wollny et al. (2010) have undertaken an extensive review of the literature. They argue that the available literature approaches the understanding and measurement of family wellbeing through the prism of varying frameworks based on:

• ecological systems theory;

• resource theory;

• family systems theory.

Ecological systems theory

Ecology is the study of the representation of living organisms and the interactions among and between organisms and their environments. In human ecological systems theory the wellbeing of humans is embedded within the wellbeing of their biological, physical and social environments, in other words: 'the wellbeing of individuals and families cannot be considered apart from the wellbeing of the whole ecosystem' (Rettig and Leichtentritt, 1999, p. 309). When applied to families, it is argued that their wellbeing and environments are linked through interactions and interdependent relationships. For example, an ecological perspective is now standard in the context of family interventions and programmes (Barnes et al., 2005).

Voydanoff (2007) also identifies six categories of family, work and community characteristics derived from an analysis of empirical research:

• structure;

• social organisation;

• norms and collective efficacy;

• support (the provision or receipt of instrumental or emotional social support);

• orientations (the salience, commitment, involvement, aspirations);

• quality (subjective evaluation of multidimensional domains).

Together, the ecological levels and categories serve as a framework for examining links between family, work and community.