Why and how to measure children's subjective well‑being

March 2026

Key messages

Measuring children’s subjective well-being provides direct insight into how children perceive their lives, environments, and whether they feel supported. Evidence shows that higher life satisfaction in childhood is often, though not uniformly, associated with stronger engagement in learning, better academic performance, more positive social relationships, healthier behaviours and greater life satisfaction in adulthood. And while measuring children’s subjective well-being can pose a number of challenges, given its importance, it is critical to ensure that the right measurement approaches are taken.

The OECD’s Guidelines on Measuring Subjective Well-being (2013[1]) defines subjective well-being as: “Good mental states, including all of the various evaluations, positive and negative, that people make of their lives, and the affective reactions of people to their experiences” (OECD, 2013[1]; 2025[2]). This broad and inclusive definition encompasses three core dimensions: cognitive or evaluative components (such as life satisfaction), hedonic components (positive and negative affect), and eudaimonia which refers to a sense of living well. Applying these components to the measurement of children’s subjective well-being raises several important considerations, explored in-depth in a new OECD technical report (OECD, 2026[3]). The key findings are summarised in this brief and include:

• Life satisfaction can be meaningfully measured among children aged 15 and above using a single 0-10 rating question, consistent with OECD Guidelines (“Overall, how satisfied are you with life as a whole these days?”). Single-item life satisfaction measures offer the practical advantage of brevity, and their widespread use among adults enables direct comparisons across age groups, including during the transition from adolescence to adulthood. However, the gains in reliability, validity, and – crucially – the ability to test cross-group comparability among children can be substantial if survey space allows for a short multi-item scale to be used instead. This is particularly important for younger children (roughly ages 10 to 12), for whom evidence on the performance of single-item scales is especially limited. For younger respondents, additional supports such as visual scales (e.g. emoticons) can improve comprehension and enhance cross-cultural comparability. In multi-item scales, simplified response formats with fewer categories than the standard 0-10 scale can also help reduce survey fatigue, which is an important consideration for this age group.

• Domain-specific satisfaction measures provide essential insights into areas of life that children consider important and that can be highly relevant for policy intervention. These include satisfaction with school, health, family and peer relationships, material conditions, leisure and play, physical appearance and body image, and interactions with adults. Neighbourhood satisfaction is also increasingly used and can be strengthened by incorporating questions about access to green spaces, opportunities for contact with nature, and availability of “third places” where children can relax and socialise safely. Given children’s extensive engagement in digital environments, satisfaction with digital life is a growing domain that should be systematically integrated into future survey instruments.

• Positive and negative affect can be measured reliably among older children (around ages 10 to 12) and adolescents, provided instruments are adapted to reflect developmental stages and the learning context. Measurement typically involves asking children whether they have experienced specific positive emotions (e.g. happy, lively, proud, joyful, cheerful) and negative emotions (e.g. scared, miserable, afraid, sad). The reference period used to capture affect varies across existing cross-national studies. Questions that address states and emotions experienced “yesterday” support accurate reporting and reduce recall biases, but other well-validated tools (often used to measure affect-related components of mental health) use a longer reference period such as “the past two weeks”.

• Eudaimonia, which encompasses meaning, purpose, autonomy, and positive relationships, is an essential dimension of children’s subjective well-being and helps assess whether children are flourishing across stages of development. Measures must be adapted to children’s cognitive and emotional maturity, especially for abstract concepts such as purpose or autonomy. From about age 12, the OECD Guidelines’ core question (“To what extent do you feel the things you do in your life are worthwhile?” on a 0-10 scale) can be used to track developmental changes through adolescence. Other eudaimonic constructs included in the OECD Guidelines remain relevant but require age-appropriate adaptations, drawing on existing multi-item scales used in cross-national research on children’s well-being. The development of supportive and positive relationships should also be embedded in these measures as a central component of healthy development.

• Selecting the appropriate survey vehicle and data collection mode is critical for producing meaningful and policy-relevant measures of children’s subjective well-being. Education and health surveys allow analysis of relationships between well-being, learning, and health outcomes, though space limitations typically restrict subjective well-being content to short, validated modules. Time-use surveys capture emotional experiences across children’s daily routines, while longitudinal child cohort studies make it possible to examine how well-being evolves over time and how it is shaped by earlier life experiences. Understanding the drivers of children’s well-being also requires collecting information on material and socio-economic background, family relationships, school climate, neighbourhood characteristics, and exposure to risks such as bullying – factors that often predict well-being more strongly than demographic characteristics alone.

What is child subjective well-being?

Children’s subjective well-being refers to how they experience and evaluate their lives, encompassing both their overall evaluations of their life and their emotional responses to everyday experiences. It is shaped by their developmental stage, individual perspectives, and the quality of their relationships and experiences across key environments – including family, school, community, and the digital world. A central challenge in measuring children’s subjective well-being is to ensure that measurement approaches are relevant, age-appropriate, and meaningful across different stages of childhood and adolescence. Similar to the taxonomy developed for adult populations (OECD, 2013[1]; 2025[2]), child subjective well-being can be understood as encompassing three interrelated but distinct dimensions:

a. Life evaluation, which is a reflective assessment of life as a whole or of specific aspects of life. For children, life evaluation can include judgments about domains such as family, school, and health.

b. Affect refers to the experience of positive and negative states and emotions, typically measured at a specific point in time. In research on children, greater emphasis has traditionally been placed on positive affect, such as feelings linked to good health and active engagement in learning. More recent work, however, has increasingly examined negative affect as well, providing a more accurate picture of children’s overall subjective well-being.

c. Eudaimonia refers to the sense of living well, capturing whether children perceive their activities as meaningful and worthwhile, feel cared for and supported, experience self-acceptance, positive relationships, and personal growth, and develop confidence, competence, and a degree of autonomy as they grow older.

Why measuring children’s subjective well-being matters?

Children’s subjective well-being has both intrinsic and instrumental value. Promoting children’s life satisfaction, emotional well-being and sense of living well is a meaningful goal in itself. It is also closely linked to the principles of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC), which establishes that children are rights-holders whose entitlements extend beyond basic survival to include protection, participation, and the right to have their views taken seriously (OHCHR, 1989[4]). Measuring children’s subjective well-being offers a direct way to understand how they evaluate their lives and environments, whether they feel supported. At the same time, subjective well-being is positively associated with a range of child outcomes, including good physical and mental health, engagement in learning, and the development of supportive social relationships.

Subjective well-being during childhood lays the foundation for subjective well-being for the rest of life. Evidence shows that higher levels of life satisfaction in childhood are often – though not uniformly – associated with stronger engagement in learning, better academic performance, more positive social relationships, and greater life satisfaction in adulthood.

Measuring affect is also essential, as children’s emotional experiences are closely linked to key attitudes and conditions shaping development, including engagement in learning, physical activity, perceptions of schoolwork pressure, family functioning, emotional climate, and mental health. Affective measures provide valuable insight into how current living conditions influence children’s subjective well-being at the population level. Given growing concerns about declining youth well-being and mental health, the measurement of negative affect is particularly important, as it can serve as an early warning signal of reduced well-being and the emergence of widespread mental health difficulties. Finally, capturing children’s sense of “living well” (eudaimonia) is critical, as it reflects core developmental processes – such as the support children receive, the autonomy they gradually develop, and the formation of positive and meaningful relationships – that underpin healthy development.

Measuring subjective well-being from the onset of adolescence is crucial. Subjective well-being tends to decline during the transition to adolescence, making it especially important to begin measuring around age 10 before this decline sets in. By this age, most children will have developed the required cognitive and verbal skills for meaningful participation in surveys and discussions.

Defining and measuring children’s eudaimonia requires careful adaptation of the relevant dimensions to their age, developmental stage, cultural context, and national priorities – all of which shape children’s maturity, capacity for reflexive judgement, and evolving aspirations. Childhood is a period in which emotional security, experience of well-being and development crucially depend on the consistent care, affection, and guidance provided by parents, caregivers, and trusted adults. Such nurturing relationships help children feel safe, build confidence, and develop a sense of well-being and purpose. As children grow, they also need support in becoming increasingly autonomous, a need that becomes especially important in adolescence as they form their identity and sense of self.

Children’s perspectives on their lives often differ from what adults assume. Children’s feelings and priorities may not be accurately reflected when adults speak on their behalf. It is therefore essential to talk and listen directly to children to understand their emotions, life satisfaction and sources of meaning, and to learn about aspects of life that are the most important to them. Based on the literature on children’s perspectives on what matters to them, nine key areas stand out: (1) Feeling safe, heard and having agency; (2) Play, leisure and time use; (3) Relationships and social connections; (4) Physical well-being, food, appearance and body image; (5) Material possessions; (6) Home and family environment; (7) School life and climate; (8) Built environment and local neighbourhood; and (9) Life online.

How to measure children’s subjective well-being?

The measurement of children’s subjective well-being requires careful choices about survey instruments, question design, and data collection modes, all of which depend on the purpose of the measurement, the resources available, and children’s stage of development. A small number of targeted items can be sufficient when the aim is to link well-being with (for example) educational outcomes, while broader multi-item instruments can enhance measurement reliability across ages. In all cases, the selection of measures involves balancing criteria such as brevity, statistical robustness, policy relevance, and consistency with national and international standards.

Life satisfaction and affect are key dimensions of subjective well-being that can be meaningfully measured in children aged 10 and above. By this age, children typically possess the cognitive and emotional maturity needed to make abstract evaluations about their lives. Younger children, in contrast, tend to struggle with making abstract evaluative judgments but can more reliably report on their feelings at or around the time of assessment.

Table 1, Table 2 and Table 3 summarise the properties of the main instruments used to measure children’s subjective well-being in a selection of significant cross-national surveys (Box 1). It provides a basis for comparing these instruments across multiple criteria and helps to navigate the strengths and limitations of each measure.

Box 1. Key cross-national surveys measuring children’s subjective well-being

International Survey of Children’s Well-Being (ISCWeB): ISCWeB is one of the largest cross-national surveys focused specifically on children’s perspectives of their own lives. It collects self-reported data from children aged 8 to 12 on key areas of subjective well-being, including life satisfaction, affect, and experiences at home, school and in the community, providing unique insights into how children themselves evaluate their well-being.

Health Behaviour in School-aged Children Study (HBSC): Conducted in collaboration with the WHO, HBSC gathers data every four years from 11-, 13- and 15-year-olds in over 40 countries. It examines health behaviours, social contexts, and subjective well-being, offering a comprehensive picture of how young people’s lifestyles, relationships, and environments influence both their physical and mental health.

OECD Survey on Social and Emotional Skills (SSES): The SSES measures 10- and 15-year-old students’ social and emotional skills, such as curiosity, self-control, and empathy. It links these skills with life satisfaction, affect, aspects of eudaimonia, academic achievement, and social relationships, providing policy-relevant evidence on the non-academic factors that support children’s development and life chances. Students in sixteen sites – six countries and ten sub-national entities – participated in SSES 2023.

OECD Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA): Best known for evaluating 15-year-old students’ skills in reading, mathematics, and science across more than 80 countries, PISA also collects data on students’ life satisfaction, affect, sense of meaning in life, motivation, and learning environments. Its well-being measures complement academic results by capturing how students feel about their lives, schools, and future prospects.

Life evaluation measures included in key cross-national surveys

The way adolescents are asked to evaluate their lives varies across surveys, in part because these instruments target children at different stages of development. In PISA (which targets 15-year-old students) and HBSC (which targets 11-, 13- and 15-year-olds), life satisfaction is assessed using single-item measures, although the approach and wording differ across the two surveys. The HBSC uses an adapted version of the Cantril Ladder, where respondents are shown a picture of a ladder with the top (10) representing the best possible life and the bottom (0) representing the worst possible life, and are asked: “In general, where on the ladder do you feel you stand at the moment?”.

In contrast, PISA asks students: “Overall, how satisfied are you with your life these days?” on a 0-10 scale, where 0 indicates “not at all satisfied” and 10 represents “completely satisfied”. This format aligns with the single-item measure of subjective well-being recommended for adult populations in the OECD Guidelines on Measuring Subjective Well-Being (OECD, 2013[1]; 2025[2]). This framing is generally preferred, as the Cantril Ladder may elicit stronger social comparison than a more direct life satisfaction question (OECD, 2013[1]). Moreover, using the same wording as in adult surveys enables comparisons between adolescents and adults – particularly young adults – and helps identify how life satisfaction evolves through the transition to adulthood, a period often marked by significant changes in subjective well-being.

For younger children (around ages 10-12 and below), single-item life satisfaction questions pose greater challenges. Responses depend on children’s cognitive maturity, their ability to engage in abstract reflection about their lives, and the extent to which question wording aligns with how they naturally express judgements about their well-being. Simplified response formats with fewer options than the standard 0-10 scale may help reduce cognitive complexity. For these younger children, multi-item scales are often preferable, as they tend to offer greater reliability and have demonstrated validity, especially among children aged 10-12. Multi-item instruments help ensure that life satisfaction is measured with sufficient precision to determine what can – and cannot – be meaningfully compared across age groups, populations, and countries. The ability to test cross-group comparability substantially can substantially strengthen reliability and validity assessments.

One well-known example of a multi-item life satisfaction scale is the Students’ Life Satisfaction Scale (SLSS), which has shown good evidence of reliability, validity, and measurement invariance, particularly for children aged 10 and older. The Children’s Worlds survey (ISCWeB) further demonstrates how careful adaptation of wording can make life satisfaction questions more accessible to younger children (typically from age 8), thereby improving comprehension and accuracy.

A key limitation of multi-item life satisfaction scales, however, is that they require more time and space to administer, as respondents must answer several questions rather than a single one. This can be challenging when surveying younger children, who may have shorter attention spans, in surveys that aim to include additional measures of subjective well-being, where questionnaire space is already constrained. In addition, while such scales are used in international surveys of middle age children (roughly ages 8 to 12), such as ISCWeB, they have not been employed in cross-national surveys of older adolescents. This gap makes it difficult to assess whether results from single-item life satisfaction measures are consistent with those obtained from multi-item scales, and thus whether meaningful comparisons can be made between findings for younger children and those for adolescents.

Domain-based satisfaction measures

Domain evaluation measures are valuable for assessing children’s subjective well-being in specific areas of life – such as satisfaction with school, health, family relationships, or friendships – that are meaningful to children and relevant for policy, as they help identify areas where interventions may be needed. These self-reported measures complement objective indicators of living conditions, offering policymakers and practitioners guidance on where actions could have the greatest impact on improving children’s well-being from the children’s own perspective. For example, domain-level measures can reveal situations in which children report high overall life satisfaction yet face challenges in particular domains, providing insights into the drivers of well-being and the trade-offs between different areas of life. Therefore, it is important to collect information on life domains that matter to children. In addition, establishing a shared set of life domains for assessing domain-based satisfaction supports cross-national comparability and helps analyse how satisfaction in different domains is shaped by national or regional contexts.

Table 1. Overview of the properties of life evaluation measures for children

	Brevity	Statistical properties	Relevance	Consistency
Single-item life satisfaction 0-10 scale		Limited evidence on statistical properties, but existing studies show good reliability and validity for adolescents (10+); younger children may struggle with comprehension.	Provides valuable insights into global trends in children’s subjective well-being and is one predictor of future life satisfaction.	Commonly used in cross-national surveys of adolescents, but not of younger pre-adolescents (around age 10-12). Used in high-quality national statistical office data collections for adult populations.
Multi-item Students' Life Satisfaction Scale (SLSS)		Good evidence on reliability, validity and measurement invariance, especially for children above 10.	Useful for better measuring life satisfaction in younger children and highlighting differences across groups of children.	Used in cross-national surveys on subjective well-being of children aged around 10-12, but not in surveys for older adolescents.
Domain evaluation scales (various examples)	Administration time increases significantly with the number of domains covered.	Limited evidence on statistical properties (mainly for the PWI-SC), but growing support that domain-based satisfaction data are valid and provide useful information.	Offers insights into domains that are especially challenging for children, but the list of domains needs careful consideration.	A core set of domains appear consistently relevant internationally, but the list can also include domains tailored to specific country contexts.

Note: Green indicates that the measure performs well against the criterion, orange signals limited, mixed, or inconclusive evidence, and red highlights areas where the measure is weaker. “Brevity” refers to whether indicators are short and focused enough to minimise respondent burden while maintaining adequate measurement quality. “Statistical properties” assess whether measures are valid, reliable, and tested across age, gender, socio-economic, and cultural groups, using developmentally appropriate instruments. “Policy relevance” indicates whether measures are meaningful for policy and practice, either by reflecting what matters to children or by showing clear links to outcomes such as learning, health, and future well-being. “Consistency” refers to alignment with existing national and international standards, ensuring comparability across countries and, within countries, across surveys covering different age groups.

A key challenge lies in identifying domains that are both meaningful to children and comparable across cultural and institutional contexts. One approach is to consider the strength of statistical association between overall life satisfaction and satisfaction within specific domains of life, and use this to infer which domains matter most. However, selecting domains solely on this basis overlooks the fact that some life domains may warrant inclusion for other reasons – for instance, because they are directly linked to other child well-being or developmental outcomes (e.g. some dimensions associated with lower current well-being may contribute to higher future well-being), or because they relate to children’s rights (e.g. the right to be heard or treated with respect). Moreover, certain domains may show only a weak statistical association with overall life satisfaction, not because they are unimportant, but because responses to overall life satisfaction questions may be influenced by contextual factors or recent experiences that divert attention from a balanced reflection on satisfaction across different domains.

A first list of domains to be covered in future surveys can be derived from the domains currently covered in existing instruments and qualitative studies and interviews of children on what matters most to them. Several established instruments, such as the Brief Multidimensional Students’ Life Satisfaction Scale (BMSLSS) and the Personal Wellbeing Index for School Children (PWI-SC), provide reliable tools for measuring children’s satisfaction across life domains such as health, material possessions, and achievements, though they capture only a modest portion of overall life satisfaction. The ISCWeB survey expands domain coverage for 10- and 12-year-olds, addressing areas like home, school, friendships, neighbourhood, and self-perception, and shows that the relative importance of domains varies across cultural and institutional contexts. More recently, the OECD’s 2018 and 2022 PISA Well-being Questionnaire introduced ten domains in 13 countries, covering school, health, relationships, appearance, time use, and material possessions. While limited country coverage constrains evidence on validity and cross-national comparability, the PISA framework aligns well with other domain-based measures. A notable difference is in the response scale: PISA uses a four-point scale, whereas the PWI-SC and SSES use an 11-point (0-10) scale, allowing for greater variation in children’s responses.

Comparisons of domain-based satisfaction measures across surveys and qualitative studies suggest that current instruments could be refined to better reflect children’s priorities. Key domains include health, material possessions, physical appearance, social relationships, play and leisure, school life, neighbourhood and access to nature, and digital life. While existing surveys such as PWI-SC, ISCWeB, HBSC, PISA, and SSES cover many of these areas, differences exist in question wording, specificity, and response scales, which can affect interpretation and cross-cultural comparability. For example, satisfaction with material possessions could be expanded to reflect aspects of a “happy home”, while school-related questions benefit from clearly defined subdomains such as schoolwork. Social relationship items are stronger when they explicitly assess relationship quality rather than general satisfaction. Time use questions are clearer when broken down into play, leisure, rest, and social activities. Neighbourhood and access to green spaces, as well as digital life, are increasingly recognised as important for children’s well-being but are underrepresented in existing measures. Addressing these gaps would improve the comprehensiveness, precision, and policy relevance of domain-based assessments of children’s subjective well-being.

Affect measures included in key cross-national surveys

Affect, defined as the experience of positive and negative states and emotions, is a core dimension of subjective well-being. Measures of affect (e.g. “How happy did you feel yesterday?”) capture individuals’ momentary feelings and emotional states. While much research has focused on positive affect, evidence from the Children’s Worlds Subjective Well-being Scale shows that both positive and negative emotions are relevant aspects of children’s lived experience (Table 2). The survey incorporates a short version of Russell’s Core Affect Scale, which asks children how often in the past two weeks they felt satisfied, happy, relaxed, active, calm, and full of energy. Responses are recorded on an 11-point scale ranging from “not at all” to “extremely”.

Affective measures in cross-national surveys of children sometimes differ from those used in adult-focused questionnaires, as they capture emotions especially relevant to healthy development and engagement in learning. For example, children’s surveys often include items on whether they feel full of energy or bored – aspects typically absent from adult-oriented frameworks such as the OECD Guidelines on Measuring Subjective Well-being (OECD, 2025[2]).

Another important design consideration for measuring affect is the reference period. In large-scale adult surveys, the gold standard approach is to focus on emotions experienced “yesterday” to support reporting accuracy and reduce recall bias (OECD, 2013[1]). In practice, many surveys of both adults and children commonly use a two-week reference period – in the case of adults this is often because affect information is gathered through mental health scales that traditionally focus on two or four week time periods (OECD, 2023[6]).

Information on emotions experienced “yesterday” is collected for children in the optional PISA well-being questionnaire, administered in 2018 and 2022 in fewer than one third of participating countries. This includes question on affect such as “Did you smile or laugh a lot yesterday?” and “Did you have enough energy to get things done yesterday?”. In PISA 2018, the core student questionnaire administered in all participating countries also asked how frequently students experienced positive emotions (e.g. happy, lively, proud, joyful, cheerful) and negative emotions (e.g. scared, miserable, afraid, sad), without anchoring responses to a specific timeframe. In recent cycles, HBSC has incorporated the WHO-5 Well-Being Index, which asks about feelings of cheerfulness, calmness, energy, restfulness, and interest in daily life over the two weeks preceding the survey. The optional PISA well-being questionnaire administered in 2018 and 2022 also included items on health complaints similar to those used in the HBSC study.

Table 2. Overview of the properties of affect measures

	Brevity	Statistical properties	Relevance	Consistency
Children’s Worlds Subjective Well-being Scale	Limited to 6 items: three positive (happy, calm, full of energy) and three negative (sad, stressed, bored) over the past two weeks.	Good evidence on reliability, validity and measurement invariance for children around age 10 and 12.	Both positive and negative emotions are included.	Used in cross-national surveys on subjective well-being of middle-age children, but not in surveys for older adolescents.
HBSC questionnaire	Feelings of cheerfulness, calmness, energy, restfulness, over the two weeks preceding the survey.	Reliable and valid measure for children aged 11, 13 and 15.	Relevant to measure relationships with physical activity, health and mental health.	A two-week timeframe ensures consistency with mental health tools.
PISA 2018 & 2022 questionnaires	2018 main questionnaire: positive emotions – such as happy, lively, proud, joyful and cheerful – as well as negative emotions – such as scared, miserable, afraid and sad – no timeframe indicated.	Evidence on the affect measure in the main questionnaire is limited, but the 2018 well-being questionnaire shows it has good validity and fits well in a model of subjective well-being.	Relevant to measure relationships with engagement in learning, school environment, and academic performance.	The mix of measures capturing short-term affect and more lasting emotional states could be streamlined and better aligned with recommended affect measures.

Note: Green indicates that the measure performs well against the criterion, orange signals limited, mixed, or inconclusive evidence, and red highlights areas where the measure is weaker.

Eudaimonia measures included in key cross-national surveys

Because assessing eudaimonia, broadly defined as a sense of living well, requires a relatively high level of cognitive reflection, it is generally unsuitable for survey measurement in children under age 10. From around age 10 onward, however, well-designed survey questions can capture these aspects of well-being more reliably. From that point, eudaimonic experiences continue to evolve as children grow, acquire social and emotional competencies, and their life priorities become more complex.

In middle childhood, children place particular importance on feeling listened to, respected, and cared for, reflecting their growing desire for autonomy and self-determination, as recognised in the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. These dimensions are key to the cross-national Children’s Worlds Survey (ISCWeB), which asks children aged 8 to 12 whether they are satisfied with how parents, teachers, and other adults listen to them and take their views into account. The survey also explores children’s satisfaction with the freedom they have and the opportunities available to them in life. Perceived parental support is also captured in the HBSC and PISA surveys, although through different instruments. The HBSC study assesses family support using the Family subscale of the Multidimensional Scale of Perceived Social Support, where children rate four items related to emotional help, problem-solving, and family willingness to support them on a seven-point agreement scale. In contrast, PISA 2022 uses a broader Family Support Index based on how often families engage in supportive behaviours, such as discussing school progress, sharing meals, talking about problems, encouraging achievement, and showing interest in what the student is learning.

For children aged 10 and 12, the ISCWeB survey also measures eudaimonia using an adapted version of the Psychological Well-being Scale (Table 3), which assesses six core dimensions of psychological well-being using a 0-10 response scale: self-acceptance (“I like being the way I am”), environmental mastery (“I am good at managing my daily responsibilities”), positive relations with others (“People are generally friendly towards me”), autonomy (“I have enough choice about how I spend my time”), personal growth (“I feel that I am learning a lot at the moment”), and confidence in the future (“I feel positive about my future”). Together, these dimensions capture the extent to which children feel capable, connected, and oriented toward personal development. The scale demonstrates good reliability, internal consistency, and validity, with evidence of measurement invariance across sex and age, though not across countries, suggesting that children in different cultural contexts may interpret some items differently.

During adolescence, friendships, social connectedness, community belonging, and the development of purpose and goals become increasingly important. Although the OECD’s SSES and PISA surveys primarily treat these areas as outcomes of social and emotional skills, many of their items correspond to key dimensions of eudaimonia, such as autonomy, environmental mastery, personal growth, positive relationships, and purpose in life. However, these instruments generally do not measure adolescents’ overall sense that life is worthwhile. PISA 2018 addressed this gap with an item on life meaning, which has shown good validity, though its wording and four-point scale differ from the 0-10 “worthwhile life” item recommended in the OECD Guidelines (“Overall, to what extent do you feel the things you do in your life are worthwhile?”) (OECD, 2025[2]). Harmonising adolescent measures with the OECD Guidelines would enable monitoring of how purpose and meaning develop from adolescence into adulthood. Because such questions require more abstract reflection, they are more suitable for respondents aged 12 and above.

As children enter adolescence, strengthening measures of autonomy and positive relationships becomes particularly important, as both dimensions play a growing role in shaping their developing self and social identity.

Sense of autonomy

Sense of autonomy is proposed to be measured among individuals aged 15 and over through the item “I am able to do things that I really want and value in life” (OECD, 2025[2]). However, this wording may be unsuitable for younger children (e.g. those aged under 12), whose aspirations and capacity for autonomous action are still developing. A more age-appropriate alternative is the ISCWeB item “I have enough choice about how I spend my time”. For more in-depth and reliable measurement – especially among adolescents – items from the Basic Psychological Need Satisfaction and Frustration Scale (BPNSFS) can be used. These assess perceived choice, self-congruence in decisions, and feelings of pressure or coercion. This instrument includes statements such as: “I feel a sense of choice and freedom in the things I do”, “I feel that my decisions reflect what I really want”, “I feel my choices express who I really am”, “I feel forced to do many things I wouldn’t choose to do”, and “I feel pressured to do too many things”. While the BPNSFS has been validated for adolescent samples below age 15, further validation work is needed to confirm its psychometric properties across different age groups and cultural contexts. The SSES plans to pilot a four-item version of this scale, using a four-point response format (strongly agree, agree, disagree, strongly disagree).

Positive personal relationships

Supportive relationships with parents, teachers, peers, and other adults help children feel secure, expand their social worlds, and develop a healthy sense of identity. Existing instruments capture these dimensions in various ways: the ISCWeB Psychological Well-being Scale includes items such as “People are generally friendly towards me”; the PWI-SC asks “How happy are you about getting on with the people you know?”; and cross-national surveys often include more detailed items on feeling listened to, supported, and treated kindly by parents, teachers, and friends.

Table 3. Overview of the properties of eudaimonia measures

	Brevity	Statistical properties	Relevance	Consistency
Psychological Well-being Scale (as implemented in the ISCWeB)	6 items, each one capturing one dimension of eudaimonia: how children see themselves, how well they handle daily responsibilities, how friendly they think others are, how much choice they have in spending their time, how much they enjoy learning, and how hopeful they feel about the future.	Good reliability, internal consistency, and validity, measurement invariance across sex and age but not across countries.	Good coverage of most core dimensions of eudaimonia.	Tailored to children’s experiences, but lacks consistency with measures used for older adolescents. Does not include a question on feeling that the things you do in life are worthwhile – which may be less meaningful for children aged 10-12 – but covers, through adapted items, the other dimensions in the OECD (2025) extended eudaimonia module.
PISA & SSES questionnaires	Only PISA 2018 includes a measure of students’ sense of meaning and purpose in life.	Evidence indicates that a sense of meaning in life is a valid measure for children aged 15 and above and aligns well with broader models of subjective well-being..	Relevant for examining relationships with social and emotional skills, engagement in learning, the school environment, and academic performance.	Partial alignment between PISA & SSES; eudaimonia items could better reflect dimensions that are central to child development.

Note: Green indicates that the measure performs well against the criterion, orange signals limited, mixed, or inconclusive evidence, and red highlights areas where the measure is weaker.

Cross-cutting issues and considerations

Developing data collection on children’s subjective well-being requires navigating key uncertainties, including ensuring the questions included are meaningful to children, which survey vehicles and data collection modes to use, and how to balance cross-national standards with cultural and policy-specific needs. Direct consultation with children is crucial for identifying meaningful domains and ensuring questions are understandable, especially for abstract concepts like eudaimonia.

As with all survey data, survey design factors play a role in shaping responses. For example, observed differences between PISA and HBSC findings for 15-year-olds highlight the influence of sampling (e.g. school year and grade, average age, or cohort), the timing of data collection, and the context in which surveys are administered (e.g. whether they follow an academic test or are framed by health-related questions) (OECD, 2026[3]). Analyses of survey data should therefore take into account differences in sample design, coverage, and adolescent characteristics when comparing responses across studies.

Selecting the appropriate survey vehicle shapes the depth and type of information collected. Education and health surveys allow links to learning and health outcomes but permit only brief modules, while time-use surveys, cohort studies, or dedicated well-being surveys can capture richer information. Consistency across waves is essential when using longitudinal designs. Stronger data linkages – with strict safeguards – would allow well-being measures to be connected to administrative records on health, education, and service use.

Survey design must minimise bias by placing well-being questions early in the questionnaire, reducing risks such as test fatigue or carryover effects from preceding items. Questions should use simple, age-appropriate wording that children can easily understand. Younger children may require shorter Likert scales or visual aids, while 0-10 scales remain preferable for adolescents. Piloting and cognitive testing help ensure cultural and developmental suitability. Data collection mode also matters: digital tools offer accessible formats, but response rates and inclusiveness must be evaluated.

Cultural sensitivity and broad relevance across different country contexts is essential for measures used in cross-national studies. Some mainstream subjective well-being instruments have been criticised as being too strongly grounded in Western, individualistic assumptions. Including measures that capture concepts such as interdependent or relational well-being, can help to address important gaps.

Achieving population-representative samples is another central challenge: for example, many existing surveys struggle to reach children with disabilities or those outside mainstream schooling. Participatory design, flexible communication methods, trauma-sensitive approaches, and the involvement of trusted adults help ensure ethical and meaningful participation.

Whenever possible, survey modules should include life evaluation, affect, and eudaimonia together to improve analytical value. Finally, measures of subjective well-being should be embedded within a broader child well-being framework, allowing children’s perceptions to be understood alongside information on material, social, educational, and health outcomes. When pursuing this approach, it is crucial to design surveys so that results can be matched with information on children’s relational (and proximal) factors, such as exposure to bullying, peer and family relationships, and school experiences. Evidence suggests that these proximal factors are often stronger predictors of children’s subjective well-being than material living conditions or sociodemographic characteristics, such as socioeconomic status or family size.

References

[3] OECD (2026), Measuring children’s subjective well-being: Rationale, empirical approaches and future directions, OECD Publishing, Paris, https://doi.org/10.1787/a9b57ebc-en.

[2] OECD (2025), OECD Guidelines on Measuring Subjective Well-being (2025 Update), OECD Publishing, Paris, https://doi.org/10.1787/9203632a-en.

[5] OECD (2023), “Subjective well-being measurement: Current practice and new frontiers”, OECD Papers on Well-being and Inequalities, No. 17, OECD Publishing, Paris, https://doi.org/10.1787/4e180f51-en.

[1] OECD (2013), OECD Guidelines on Measuring Subjective Well-being, OECD Publishing, Paris, https://doi.org/10.1787/9789264191655-en.

[4] OHCHR (1989), Convention on the Rights of the Child, United Nations Human Rights - Office of the High Commissioner, https://www.ohchr.org/en/professionalinterest/pages/crc.aspx (accessed on 5 May 2021).

Resources

OECD Child Well-being Data Portal: https://www.oecd.org/en/data/datasets/oecd-child-well-being-data-portal.html

OECD Child Well-being Dashboard: https://www.oecd.org/en/data/dashboards/oecd-child-well-being-dashboard.html

Contacts

For more information contact us: [e-mail]

Revised version, May 2026. The following changes have been made:

Page 1: Addition of the first paragraph in the box of Key messages

OECD Centre on Well-being, Inclusion, Sustainability and Equal Opportunity (WISE)

www.oecd.org/wise