Measuring eudaimonic wellbeing in children and young people aged 10 to 17 years old in the UK

Dr Alexandra Turner is the Applied Research Lead working in the research, evaluation, and impact team at The Children’s Society. The main focus of her role is in providing expertise and guidance on the measurement and understanding of children’s wellbeing. She is part of the research team who produce the annual Good Childhood Report. 

The Children’s Society is there for children and young people when they most need help. It supports them when they’re facing huge life challenges like abuse, exploitation, or neglect, and campaign tirelessly for the big social changes needed to change the lives of the next generation for the better. The Children’s Society has been doing this work for 140 years and won’t rest until every child is safe, happy, and hopeful.

We are an independent collaborating centre and the aim of our work is to improve wellbeing and reduce misery in the UK. We believe that this is the ultimate goal of effective policy and community action. By accelerating research and democratising access to wellbeing evidence, we develop and share robust evidence for governments, businesses, communities and people to improve wellbeing across the UK.

Our 2021 Rapid Evidence Assessment of known and validated measures of children’s subjective wellbeing in the UK REA highlighted an absence of validated measures for eudaimonic wellbeing.

One reason for this evidence gap is that existing measures have been designed and used with adults, rather than children.

In this short discussion paper Dr Alex Turner introduces a new study, conducted by The Children’s Society, which aims to address an evidence gap by providing a robust measure of eudaimonic wellbeing for children and young people aged 10 to 17 in the UK, and to further the evidence on this comparatively neglected area.

Turner, A., (2023) Measuring eudaimonic wellbeing in children and young people aged 10 to 17 years old in the UK, Discussion Paper, What Works Centre for Wellbeing