Being able to measure people’s quality of life is fundamental when assessing the progress
of societies. There is now widespread acknowledgement that measuring subjective well-being
is an essential part of measuring quality of life alongside other social and economic
dimensions. As a first step to improving the measures of quality of life, the OECD
has produced Guidelines which provide advice on the collection and use of measures
of subjective well-being. These Guidelines have been produced as part of the OECD
Better Life Initiative, a pioneering project launched in 2011, with the objective
to measure society’s progress across eleven domains of well-being, ranging from jobs,
health and housing, through to civic engagement and the environment.These Guidelines
represent the first attempt to provide international recommendations on collecting,
publishing, and analysing subjective well-being data. They provide guidance on collecting
information on people's evaluations and experiences of life, as well as on collecting
“eudaimonic” measures of psychological well-being. The Guidelines also outline why
measures of subjective well-being are relevant for monitoring and policy making, and
why national statistical agencies have a critical role to play in enhancing the usefulness
of existing measures. They identify the best approaches for measuring, in a reliable
and consistent way, the various dimensions of subjective well-being, and provide guidance
for reporting on such measures. The Guidelines also include a number of prototype
survey modules on subjective well-being that national and international agencies can
use in their surveys.