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NPC devises survey of kids' wellbeing 1

Fundraising | Gemma Ware | 7 Feb 2008

Children’s charities struggling to measure how their work improves children’s wellbeing can now hand kids a new questionnaire developed by donor adviser charity New Philanthropy Capital.

The questionnaire has been designed for 11 to 16-year-olds and includes questions on whether they worry about their family, have a happy home life and whether they like their neighbourhood.

In a report to be published next week detailing how the questionnaire was developed and piloted, NPC said measuring wellbeing would give charities the opportunity to “capture what are often thought of as ‘intangible’ or even ‘immeasurable’ outcomes”.

Lucy Heady, a quantitative analyst for NPC and co-author of the report, said wellbeing was very much on the agenda at the moment. “It’s something that government are really starting to think about seriously, but there’s no standard measure out there and there’s nothing that particularly meets the needs of charities.”

The report said information on wellbeing could be used to communicate the benefits to both statutory and voluntary funders, and as a basis for allocating funds to different projects with the same objectives.

However, NPC warned against comparing raw data from the questionnaire without putting it into context. “Before comparisons can be made between projects, a framework must be established that accounts for differences in background and severity of need.”

The questionnaire is now being refined after feedback from two pilot projects at the Outward Bound Trust and a secondary school, to include additional questions on children’s sense of achievement and purpose. Heady said more work was also needed to understand whether the questionnaire could detect the impact of charity projects over time.

NPC plans to run further pilots of the questionnaire before offering it to charities interested in measuring their impact towards the end of 2008. Heady said it was likely to control use of the questionnaire through a licence, with charities required to feed back their results to NPC.

The questionnaire is the first such project to come out of NPC Tools, a team set up last July to develop tools to help charities measure, analyse and report their results.

NPC Tools plans to develop wellbeing questionnaires targeted at other sections of society, such as older people and children and adults with learning difficulties.   

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Directory: New Philanthropy Capital
Who's Who: Gemma Ware