Use Subjective Wellbeing Valuation to demonstrate your intervention’s social value

Subjective Wellbeing Valuation (SWV) is a method that measures how social initiatives affect overall well-being, using life satisfaction as the key indicator. By asking the simple question, "Overall, how satisfied are you with your life at the moment?" on a scale of 0 to 10, we get a so-called WELLBY-score that helps us clearly understand the state of individual wellbeing. And one point of life satisfaction is referred to as one WELLBY.

This method helps capture the personal and emotional benefits of social interventions, showing how they increase life satisfaction, thereby creating social value for the participants.

Because the life satisfaction questionnaire has been widely used for many years, we can use coefficients to also understand how different social changes impact overall life satisfaction.

For example, we can calculate how reduced loneliness, increased sense of safety in your neighborhood or improved self-esteem impacts life satisfaction.

Lastly, the simplicity of the question makes it easy to collect and interpret data. It has been used worldwide for over fifty years, making it a trusted and widely used methodology.