Social Investment Research programme
The Ministry of Social Development is working on a major cross-disciplinary research project, the Social Investment Research Programme (SIRP), to inform policy initiatives designed to improve social wellbeing.
The project is coordinated by Dr Angelique Praat, Principal Analyst in the Research and Evaluation Strategy Unit of MSD's Centre for Social Research and Evaluation. It has been developed as a partnership with community sector expertise to draw on a range of views and experience.
The project's goal is to improve the evidence base to better support decision making on investments directed at improving social wellbeing across all areas of social policy.
This broad goal is broken down into four objectives. The first of these, developing a conceptual framework for understanding social wellbeing, has been the main focus of work on the project so far. This stage of the work has involved looking at the literature and existing knowledge on what communities value and regard as important for their wellbeing.
"We used the definition of wellbeing in the Social Report as the starting point for our discussion of wellbeing, as this is one of the few places social wellbeing is defined in the New Zealand context," Angelique says. "Social wellbeing is the things people value in their life that contribute to them reaching their potential. It is a shorthand way of referring to the conditions in society - health, education, productive work and so on - that allow people to flourish. That's the way we understand it at the moment."
However, although there may be agreement about the broad essentials for wellbeing across society, different communities within society may have different views or emphasise different values.
"One of the things we are looking at is what different communities in New Zealand place value on, and think is necessary for them to have happy and healthy lives. What would social wellbeing look like if it reflected the value of Māori and Pasifika communities? We are looking at how current understandings of social wellbeing reflect the value base of New Zealanders, and how we can broaden that understanding to take account of the diversity of views held by particular communities."
Angelique said social wellbeing was impacted on by any initiative directed at people, and the concept emphasised that all aspects of life were interconnected. "For example, an employment initiative will have wider impacts than just moving people from unemployment to paid work. There will be impacts in the areas of social connectedness, health, family life, time for leisure, and so on. Social wellbeing keeps the broader picture in mind. There is a growing consensus in the government social sector that 'social wellbeing' is something all agencies contribute to."
Another goal of SIRP is developing measures of wellbeing to both support the Ministry's social reporting frameworks and also its research and evaluation activities. Work to date has included examining international models of measurement of wellbeing to see what can be learned from those methodologies. 2004 saw visits from Dr Clive Hamilton, developer of the Genuine Progress Indicator in Australia; and Dr Ron Colman, developer of the Genuine Progress Index for Nova Scotia, Canada.
"The conceptual and measurement streams have been the focus of our work so far. We've been setting the groundwork for the other two objectives, the first of which includes identifying the drivers of wellbeing and interrelationships between them.
"The final objective, and the one that will bring the whole research programme together, is to build models, tools and frameworks that will allow us to better assess the impact of existing and proposed policies and programmes on social outcome measures."
For more information contact Angelique.Praat001@msd.govt.nz
