Participatory methods and the measurement of well-being

This article, part of the 50th issue of PLA Notes, looks at the conceptual shift from development to well-being and the role that participatory approaches can have in shaping the agenda. The article reflects on two main questions: the definition of well-being and its measurement. How can participatory methods contribute to the meaning and measurement of well-being? What challenges does the new focus on well-being bring to the PLA tradition? The authors argue that a shift from wealth ranking to well-being ranking (having, doing and thinking axes) can help us gain a fuller sense of social processes and interactions. Dimensions of well-being have the ability to reflect social factors as well as individual factors, and can represent the dynamics of deprivation at levels beyond the household. The second part of the article looks at participatory methods and the measurement of well-being, and suggests that ultimately it is not so much the techniques used as how the research is conducted and the relationships established between researchers and research participants that determine the quality of research. The authors suggest that questions of ethics and behaviour have a direct bearing on how valid and accurate the findings are. The article concludes by highlighting three major conditions necessary for participatory methods to be used effectively to define alternative understandings of well-being; the meaning and interpretation of numerical data; an appreciation of the relations between local and universal models of reality; and finally, recognizing the risk that well-being may simply replace development with little meaningful change at the conceptual level.