The Ethical Imperative of Qualitative Methods: Developing Measures of Subjective Dimensions of Well-Being in Zambia and India

Abstract

Well-being advocates state that it provides a more holistic, humanistic focus for public policy. Paradoxically, however, well-being debates tend to be dominated by highly quantitative, de-contextualised statistical methods accessible to only a minority of technical experts. This paper argues the need to reverse this trend. Drawing on original primary mixed method research in Zambia and India it shows the critical contribution of qualitative methods to the development of a quantitative model of subjective perspectives on well-being. Such contributions have a political, ethical and practical urgency if subjective measures of well-being are to be used in policy.

Keywords:

• Subjective Well-being
• Mixed Methods
• Qualitative Methods
• Zambia
• India
• Cross-cultural

Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the Economic and Social Research Council/ Department For International Development Joint Scheme for Research on International Development (Poverty Alleviation) grant number RES-167-25-0507 ES/H033769/1. Many thanks are due to the other members of the Wellbeing Pathways Team whose work this paper reflects: UK-based, Stanley Gaines Jr., Nina Marshall, Susanna Siddiqui; Zambia based, Hodi and Joseph Kajiwa, Kelvin Matesamwa, Goodson Phiri; India based, Chaupal and Gangaram Paikra, Pritam Das, Usha Kujur, Kanti Minjh, and Dinesh Tirkey.

Notes

1. Interestingly, this tends to support the claims of Self-Determination Theory, which sees well-being as the outcome of satisfying three basic psychological needs (autonomy, competence and relatedness) (Ryan and Deci 2001).

2. The text does not state how many cases this applies to.

3. This was the first phase of the research programme. There was another round of fieldwork in each country in 2012 (Zambia) and 2013 (India) but the results of this are not reported here. For more information see www.wellbeingpathways.org.

4. More detail explaining the difference between various different kinds of subjective questions, and our model of the ‘layers’ of well-being which seeks to capture this, is given in White, Gaines Jr., and Jha (2012, 12).

5. Negatively worded items were recoded before analysis so that a high final score represented high well-being.