General information
Description
Personal well-being (PWB) is part of the wider Measuring National Well-being (MNW) Programme at the Office for National Statistics (ONS), which aims to provide accepted and trusted measures of the nation’s well-being. Personal well-being using four measures (often referred to as the ONS4), which capture three types of well-being: evaluative, eudemonic and affective experience. These measures ask people to evaluate how satisfied they are with their life overall, asking whether they feel they have meaning and purpose in their life, and asks about their emotions during a particular period.
You can use these measures on their own or in any combination. The full set is here.
This page describes the measure of whether people felt happy yesterday. Asking people to describe their emotions in the recent past (rather than at this moment in time) allows them to assess their mood more generally, and avoids the halo effect.
Questions
On a scale of 0 to 10, where 0 is “not at all” and 10 is “completely”:
Overall, how happy did you feel yesterday?
Source
Tinkler, L., & Hicks, S. (2011). Measuring subjective well-being. Office for National Statistics. Available here.
Validation details
ONS (2012) Overview of ONS phase three cognitive testing of Subjective Wellbeing Questions. ONS Summary report.
Implementation
Cost / Terms of Use
Free (No permission required)
Instructions and Scoring
Guidance and thresholds here
Benchmarking
Data source name
Annual Population Survey. Also asked in these surveys.
Frequency
Quarterly; Annually
Latest data
You can find the latest data here.
Link to historical data
You can find earlier data here
Population
Over 16; socio-economic classification, age, gender, ethnicity, education