Since 2011, the Office for National Statistics has asked personal wellbeing questions to adults in the UK, to better understand how they feel about their lives. An individual’s thoughts and feelings about their own quality of life is an important aspect of wellbeing – both personal and national. How satisfied people are with their lives, their levels of happiness and anxiety, and whether or not they think the things they do are worthwhile all have strong links with many elements of well-being, for example, people’s health, employment and relationships.
The four Personal Wellbeing questions are:
- overall, how satisfied are you with your life nowadays?
- overall, to what extent do you feel the things you do in your life are worthwhile?
- overall, how happy did you feel yesterday?
- overall, how anxious did you feel yesterday?
People are asked to respond on a scale of 0 to 10, where 0 is “not at all” and 10 is “completely”. ONS produce estimates of the average (mean) ratings for all four personal well-being questions, as well as their distributions, using the thresholds below (Low/Very Low, Medium, High/Very High).
The charts above show that personal wellbeing in Northern Ireland has improved since data were first collected. The charts also show that, in general, there are significantly higher proportions of respondents reporting very high levels of life satisfaction, worthwhile and happiness than in the UK overall. In recent years there has also been a marked distinction in terms of anxiety, with latest figures indicating a greater proportion of NI respondents indicating very low levels of anxiety than was the case in the UK overall.
- Life Satisfaction (2017): 36.3% of NI respondents reported very high levels of life satisfaction (a score of 9 or 10) compared with 30.1% in the UK overall.
- Worthwhile (2017): 42.1% of NI respondents reported very high levels in terms of the feeling that the things they do in life are worthwhile compared with 35.7% in the UK overall.
- Happiness (2017): 40.6% of NI respondents reported very high levels of happiness compared with 35.1% in the UK overall.
- Anxiety (2017): 46.5% of NI respondents reported very low levels of anxiety (a score of 0 or 1) compared with 40.2% in the UK overall.
The Personal Wellbeing domain also includes the following measure:
- Population mental wellbeing
The population mental wellbeing score is based on the Short Warwick-Edinburgh Mental Wellbeing Scale (7 item scale). Each question is given a score between 1 and 5 with the final result measured out of 35, a higher score indicating more positive mental wellbeing. At 25.6 in 2015/16 the average score for respondents in Northern Ireland was slightly higher than the UK average (25.2).
Do you want to know more? – Office for National Statistics Wellbeing
10 National Wellbeing Domains
Personal wellbeing Our relationships Health What we do
Where we live Personal finance The economy