Richard Crellin: This short video takes you through the findings of the Life Satisfaction Project, published by the What Works Center for Wellbeing. In April of 2024.
Richard Crellin: The project aimed to understand what works to improve life, satisfaction, an important measure of our wellbeing in people of all ages across the life course.
Richard Crellin: and it was informed by 2 rapid evidence reviews.
Richard Crellin: Each review had its own research question, and the first review asked, What is the effectiveness of interventions aimed at improving life satisfaction, while the second asked, What are the long-term determinants of life? Satisfaction.
Richard Crellin: The reviews were carried out by researchers at Kohlrabi, and the project was funded by the Evaluation Task Force at the Cabinet Office, the Department for Transport, and the Department for Culture media and sport
Richard Crellin: for studies to be included in the 2 reviews. They had to meet a number of search criteria.
Richard Crellin: We were looking at the general population from childhood to older adults.
Richard Crellin: and we were looking for studies that measured their outcomes, using a validated measure of life satisfaction.
Richard Crellin: All the studies have been published since 2,011, and they're written in English
Richard Crellin: for the Intervention Review. We were needing this study to present comparison data from a control group.
Richard Crellin: and that meant we were looking at randomized control trials, experimental and quasi-experimental studies that had all been conducted in high income Oecd countries
Richard Crellin: for the Determinants Review. We were looking to investigate longitudinal associations between any factor and life satisfaction, and that meant we were looking at observational studies.
Richard Crellin: We were looking at studies that had been published in the UK. Only
Richard Crellin: for the intervention Review we found over 200 different interventions aimed at improving the life satisfaction of individuals. We organized them into 6 groups, emotion-based activities, emotional development, health, promotion, social media, music, and multi-component interventions.
Richard Crellin: We found evidence that emotional skill, development, exercise and emotion-based activities, like mindfulness, gratitude, and therapy were effective at improving life satisfaction.
Richard Crellin: We found that emotion-based activities, like reflection, visualization and social activities, were not effective at improving life satisfaction.
Richard Crellin: And we couldn't draw conclusions about interventions using social media or music because of insufficient evidence.
Richard Crellin: The rest of the interventions all provided mixed evidence. Some of the studies did show effective results, but by no means all
Richard Crellin: in the Determinants Review we organized the studies we found into these 6 themes economic and personal and personal financial situations, education and employment, social capital, health and health behaviors, environment and arts and culture.
Richard Crellin: We found positive associations between life satisfaction and economic and financial situations, education and employment.
Richard Crellin: social support.
Richard Crellin: physical and mental health
Richard Crellin: and arts and culture participation.
Richard Crellin: But we found more mixed and nuanced associations for community and neighborhood belonging
Richard Crellin: health behaviors
Richard Crellin: and the environment.
Richard Crellin: As you can see, these 2 reviews are very different. The Intervention review looks at personal interventions for individuals often conducted over relatively short periods of time, whilst the Determinants review looks at some of the broad factors that inform everyone's life satisfaction.
Richard Crellin: We need to build connections between these 2 bodies of evidence. And to do so, we recommend focusing resources and capacity on evaluating the effectiveness of interventions at a neighborhood community or regional level.
Richard Crellin: We also think we need to prioritize evaluation and trialing of certain interventions, including interventions in the workplace, or those being delivered to vulnerable groups
Richard Crellin: where there's insufficient evidence like music or social media.
Richard Crellin: where the intervention is linked to an important determinant of life. Satisfaction like employment, education, or close social relationships.
Richard Crellin: adding validated life satisfaction into existing and new evaluations is getting easier and more effective all the time, and needs to be encouraged.
Richard Crellin: And because this is such a rapidly growing area of evidence, we need to commission regular reviews to make sure that we're keeping up to date and using the latest and very best insights
Richard Crellin: you can find. All of the information about the project on the what works well-being website, we have briefings and a full technical report, references of all the studies identified and look up tables which allow you to sort studies using a wide range of search terms.
Richard Crellin: We've also included some things for future study, like studies on COVID-19 that we excluded from these reviews or the international studies that were excluded from the Determinants Review.
Richard Crellin: Finally, we've published an effect size table to support economists and policymakers
Richard Crellin: and a life satisfaction trial strategy which gives recommendations for the future of experimental research. In this area
Richard Crellin: all these resources can be found on the Life Satisfaction Project page of the what works well-being website.