The Wellbeing of Nations: Meaning, Motive and Measurement

5 Preparing to measure national wellbeing

For it so falls out

That what we have we prize not to the worth

Whiles we enjoy it, but being lack'd and lost,

Why, then we rack the value, then we find

The virtue that possession would not show us

Whiles it was ours.

William Shakespeare (Much Ado About Nothing, 1600)

Every journey begins with a single step. A journey to put in place a new statistic should start with a question like ‘what is it we are trying to measure?’ We learn on basic statistics courses how to derive the best estimator and how to choose the criteria for deciding this. If we are designing a survey, then similarly there are criteria – especially timeliness, cost and accuracy – to identify and to balance. For many official statistics, there are further questions to ask, such as ‘who will use this new statistic?’ and ‘what are they going to do with it?’

Questions like this help us shape a ‘user requirement’. This is usually regarded as the first step in the design and delivery of a quality product, whether that product is a new statistic or any other good or service. If quality can be summarised as ‘fitness for purpose’, then we need to know the purpose for which the product is being designed. Where the statistical product is, say, a consumer price index, then it seems reasonably straightforward to start addressing detailed questions as we build the user requirement.

However, we can already see that journeys towards the measurement of national wellbeing are tending ...