Individual Wellbeing in Northern Ireland, 2024/25

Date published: 21 January 2026

• Loneliness – measures the frequency with which people report feeling lonely
• Self-Efficacy – a person’s belief about their capabilities to exercise influence over events that affect their lives
• Personal Wellbeing – measures how satisfied people are with their lives, their levels of happiness and anxiety, and whether or not they think the things they do are worthwhile
• Locus of Control (LoC) – the degree to which a person feels in control of their life. Individuals with an internal LoC believe in their own influence and control while those with an external LoC believe control over their lives is determined by outside factors

For the following key findings, scales for self-efficacy and locus of control range from 5 to 25. Scales for personal wellbeing measures range from 0 to 10. A higher score signifies better wellbeing in the self-efficacy, life satisfaction, worthwhile, happiness and locus of control metrics, whereas a lower score signifies better wellbeing in the anxiety metric. Please also note that all differences reported between groups are statistically significant.

Key Findings

• Overall, Personal Wellbeing remained consistent with 2023/24 levels with average scores for life satisfaction, worthwhile and happiness remaining 'high' and anxiety remaining 'low'.
• Levels of self-efficacy, locus of control and the frequency of loneliness (‘at least some of the time’) remained consistent with 2023/24 levels.
• 33% of people reported very high levels of life satisfaction, 36% reported very high levels of happiness and 41% reported very high levels of feeling that the things they do are worthwhile.
• 43% of people reported very low levels of anxiety, and 20% of people reported high levels of anxiety.
• 17.9% of people reported feeling lonely ‘at least some of the time’.
• Similar to 2023/24, people who reported their health as 'very good' continue to report better levels of wellbeing than those who reported their health as 'bad/very bad', and people with a disability continue to report lower levels of wellbeing than those without a disability.
• Those who are married/in a civil partnership reported lowest loneliness, higher self-efficacy and better levels of personal wellbeing compared to all other marital status groups.
• People living in the most deprived areas (quintile 1) reported lower levels of individual wellbeing compared with people living in the least deprived areas (quintile 5).
• Similar to 2023/24, people in employment reported better levels of wellbeing than those not in employment.

Publication

The report is available on the Executive Office’s website at: www.executiveoffice-ni.gov.uk/publications/individual-wellbeing-northern-ireland-report-202425