Wellbeing in Northern Ireland, 2022/23

Date published: 15 November 2023

• 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 are statistically significant.

Key Findings

• Overall, lower life satisfaction and happiness scores and higher levels of anxiety indicate a decline in wellbeing compared with 2021/22.
• 30% of people reported very high levels of life satisfaction, 35% reported very high levels of happiness and 37% reported very high levels of feeling that the things they do are worthwhile.
• 40% of people reported very low levels of anxiety.
• 19.4% of people reported feeling lonely “at least some of the time”.
• People who reported their health as very good reported better levels of wellbeing than those who reported their health as bad/very bad, and people with a disability reported lower levels of wellbeing than those without a disability.
• People in paid employment reported better levels of wellbeing than those who were not in paid employment, and those who owned their house reported better levels of wellbeing than those in social rented accommodation.
• Those who are married/in a civil partnership reported better levels of wellbeing than those who are separated or divorced.
• People living in the most deprived areas (quintile 1) reported lower levels of wellbeing than those living in the least deprived areas (quintiles 3, 4 and 5).

Publication

The report is available on the Executive Office’s website at: www.executiveoffice-ni.gov.uk/publications/wellbeing-northern-ireland-report-202223