Individual and community wellbeing: call for evidence

UPDATE: deadline extended to Friday 22 January 2021.

Have you conducted research that looks at the relationship between individual wellbeing outcomes and wellbeing outcomes at the community level? If so, you can submit your evidence and help us to build our understanding of how individual and community wellbeing are linked.

What is happening?

We are carrying out a research project to understand and model the relationship between individual and place-based community wellbeing. 

Existing literature will be used to develop a model that will be tested in qualitative interviews and through secondary analysis of existing datasets.  

We welcome evidence of a qualitative or quantitative nature. Studies that use longitudinal methods are preferred, since they offer more reliable evidence of causality. However, we also seek evidence from high quality cross-sectional studies.

Criteria for submission

We are looking for qualitative and quantitative evidence that links individual to community level wellbeing. Research needs to meet all of the following criteria:

• Participants were asked about their individual or personal wellbeing using either:
  • quantitative measures such as the ONS4 or WEMWBS 
  • qualitative questions about how they were feeling or thinking about their lives and functioning.
• Include community-level assessments of wellbeing, such as wellbeing within geographic communities (neighbourhoods, local authorities), workplaces, schools, online, or residential communities. Community wellbeing may be broadly defined, using both objective and subjective measures and capturing community outcomes with respect to people, power and place and articulated as social capital or related concepts. 
• Evidence submitted must have been completed in the past 10 years (2010-present), be available in English and include author details (individuals, groups or organisations) and publication date.

We are particularly interested in research that investigates the mechanisms that link individual and community wellbeing.

Next steps

Please send your research and/or evaluations by Friday 22 Jan to evidence@whatworkswellbeing.org with the subject header: Individual and Community Wellbeing Evidence Review. 

Thank you for your help. 

Interested in getting updates on this project?

We will email the findings to everyone who submits material when we publish them. 

If you don’t have evidence to submit, but would like to find out the results of the research, sign up to our email alert.