Transcript Cantril`s ladder - International Society for Child Indicators

Children’s subjective well-being
Findings from national surveys in England
International Society for Child Indicators Conference, 27th July 2011
Overview
Gwyther Rees
The research programme
Collaboration between The Children’s Society and
University of York
Main aims:
 Understand the concept of well-being taking
full account of young people’s perspectives
 To establish self-report measures and use
these to:
• Identify reasons for variations in well-being
• Monitor changes in well-being over time
Principles
 Focus on young people’s views and ideas
 Adopt a holistic approach
 Take account of diversity
 Focus on present as well as future well-being
 Adopt a positive approach
Research phases
2005 survey
Exploratory qualitative research with 8,000 young
people aged 13 to 15 in schools, plus literature
review
2008 survey
7,000 young people aged 10 to 15 in schools
2010 survey
5,400 young people aged 8 to 15 in schools
Quarterly surveys
2,000 young people aged 8 to 15 in households
every 3 months from July 2010
2008 survey
Overall well-being
Three measures:
 Happiness with life as a whole (0 to 10)
 Cantril’s ladder (0 to 10)
 Shortened version of Huebner’s life
satisfaction scale (5 items) (0 to 20)
2008 survey:
Overall well-being
Most young
people happy
and satisfied
1000
900
No. of people
800
700
But around 7%
of young people
relatively
unhappy – low
well-being
600
500
400
300
200
100
0
0
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
Well-being score (0 to 10)
9
10
Variations in well-being
 Decline in well-being with age
 Slightly lower well-being amongst females
 Some variation also re: family structure,
family economic status
 Little or no variation by factors such as
ethnicity, religion, country of birth
 All of these factors only explained around 7%
of variation in overall well-being
 However…
Life events: Being bullied
10.0
Overall well-being (0-10)
8.0
8.0
7.6
7.2
6.5
6.0
4.0
2.0
0.0
Never
Hardly ever
Sometimes
Often
Frequency of being bullied in last 12 months
Family relationships
‘My family gets along well together’
Both parents
Step family
Lone parent
Overall well-being (0-10)
10.0
8.0
8.1 7.9
7.7
6.9 6.8 6.9
6.0 5.9 5.9
6.0
4.0
2.0
0.0
Agree
Neither
Disagree
Conclusions from 2008
Explaining variations in well-being:
 Individual and family factors explain relatively
little of variation
 Poverty needs further exploration
 Recent life events may play a more significant
role
 Other research suggests that we need to take
account of personality
Need to further investigate different approaches
to measuring subjective well-being
2010 survey
Survey method
 A questionnaire was developed after cognitive
testing and piloting
 Two-stage cluster sampling
 Participants filled the questionnaire online
 Administered by NFER
 Data collection took place between December
2010 and January 2011
 Over 5,400 young people aged 8 to 15 from
mainstream primary and secondary school in
England took part
Data processing and analysis
Data processing and analysis
 Data cleaning and analysis by SPSS
 Checking psychometric properties by factor
analysis, Cronbach’s Alpha
 Univariate analysis - mean or percentages
 Bivariate analysis – parametric and nonparametric
 Multivariate analysis - Multiple linear
regression, logistic regression and tobit
regression
Preliminary findings only - limitations
Today’s presentations
1. Approaches to measuring children’s subjective
well-being
2. Life events and subjective well-being
3. Personality and subjective well-being
4. Child-centred measures of child poverty and
links with subjective well-being
Approaches to
measuring children’s
well-being
Happiness with life as a
whole
Single item measure (0 to 10)
Mean = 7.6. Below the mid-point = 9.2%.
25
Percentage
20
15
10
5
0
0
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
Happiness with life as a whole
8
9
10
Cantril’s ladder
Single item measure – ‘worst possible life’ to ‘best
possible life’ (0 to 10)
Mean = 7.5. Below the mid-point = 7.8%.
30
Percentage
25
20
15
10
5
0
0
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
Cantril's ladder score
8
9
10
Life satisfaction
Shortened version of Huebner’s Student Life
Satisfaction Scale. Five items measured on fivepoint Likert scale:
 My life is going well
 My life is just right
 I wish I had a different kind of life
 I have a good life
 I have what I want in life
Single factor. Cronbach’s alpha = 0.86.
However queries about reliability with children
below the age of 10.
Life satisfaction
I have what I
4% 9%
want in life
24%
I have a good life 2%
3% 11%
18%
21%
S Neg
35%
31%
34%
46%
My life is going
2%
4% 15%
well
0%
22%
49%
I wish I had a
different kind of 6% 12%
life
My life is just
2%7%
right
41%
23%
53%
25%
Neg
50%
Mid
27%
75%
Pos
100%
S Pos
Life satisfaction
Sum of five items (0 to 20)
Mean = 14.4. Below the mid-point = 10.3%.
14
Percentage
12
10
8
6
4
2
0
0
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20
Life satisfaction
Correlations
Life satisfaction
Cantril’s ladder
Cantril’s ladder
Happiness with life
.742
.741
.739
Other properties
Missing data
Test-retest
reliability
Life satisfaction
15%*
.84
Cantril’s ladder
<1%
.59
Happiness with life
<1%
.63
Distributions for different
age groups
8 to 9 years old
14 to 15 years old
40
30
35
25
Percentage
Percentage
30
25
20
15
20
15
10
10
5
5
0
0
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
Cantril's ladder score
9 10
0
0
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
Cantril's ladder score
9 10
Associations with other
variables
A mixed picture, although the differences are not
large:
 Life satisfaction is most strongly associated
with age and gender. Cantril’s ladder is least
strongly associated.
 Cantril’s ladder is most strongly associated
with family economic status
 Happiness with life is most strongly associated
with recent experiences of bullying
Extending the approach
Our research also measures subjective well-being
in specific domains, e.g.:
 Family relationships
 School
 Appearance
 Amount of choice in life
We have used single and multi-item measures
across these domains.
In 2008 survey found that single item measures
had almost as much explanatory power as multiitem measures re: life satisfaction.
Example: Family
relationships
Single item (from 0 to 10):
 How happy are you with your relationships
with your family?
Multi-item (5 items each on 5 point Likert scale),
e.g.:
 I enjoy being at home with my family
 My parents (or carers) treat me fairly
Reliability and stability
 Test-retest reliability of single item measures
in the range 0.48 (health) to 0.72 (family
relationships).
 Reliability for multi-item scales generally
higher.
 However, single-item measures relatively
stable across four waves of survey work –
mean scores and rank order of domains
Selected domain means:
quarterly survey, four waves
8.6
Happiness (0 to 10)
8.4
Family
8.2
8
Health
7.8
7.6
Time use
7.4
7.2
School
7
6.8
The future
6.6
Jul 2010
Nov 2010
Jan 2011
Apr 2011
Other learning points from
domain measures
Queries re: wording of statements in multi-item
scales – e.g. ‘My family gets along well together’, ‘My
parents and I do fun things together’.
 Measures of subjective well-being?
 Normative assumptions?
 Completeness?
Multi-item measures do not necessarily show
stronger associations with other variables than
single-item measures.
Conclusions
Multi-item measures:
 Good reliability and short-term stability
 Particularly suitable for small samples and
measures of change.
Single item measures:
 Lower levels of missing data
 Reasonably stable for large samples
 Contain less assumptions / more open?
Further cross-national research needed to explore
validity and reliability and relative merits.