Research to Define and Measure Rural Wellbeing

The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) is commissioning research to define and measure Rural Wellbeing and then determine the feasibility of using this research to develop a "rural wellbeing toolkit" to help evaluators to assess the impact of policies upon rural areas. While measures for wellbeing do currently exist, they are not premised upon factors of particular importance to rural communities (e.g. access to services; cultural capital; environment). This limits the extent to which policy impact on the wellbeing of rural communities and individuals can be evaluated. The requirement is to identify the particular aspects (domains) of the social and natural environment that influence the wellbeing of individuals living in rural areas. These domains will then be compared with literature on wellbeing in urban environments to identify key similarities and differences and consider how the proposed measurements of wellbeing may vary by characteristics of a rural area. These domains will be tested with rural communities to ensure they are representative of their lived experience. There will then be a review of existing data leading to a summary of suggested secondary data measures and recommendations of additional primary data collection needed, to allow for measurement of these domains pre and post policy intervention, and allow evaluators to identify the impact of a policy on rural communities. The study will discuss the implications of using the measurements it suggests for policy teams, and provide a summary of the available measures to allow rural wellbeing to be assessed. The final stage will apply the domains and their measures to rural policies and determine the feasibility of developing a rural wellbeing toolkit, and lay out any potential next steps. The toolkit would provide analysts and policymakers a means to robustly identify and measure the impact of policies on the wellbeing of rural communities, and support the 'levelling up' agenda. A key activity underlying each iterative stage of the feasibility study will be the need to engage and test these domains of rural wellbeing with rural residents and experts, in order to ensure their relevance to rural communities and ensure their suitability for use in policy evaluation. The output of the study will be a report, which: 1. Details evidenced domains of rural wellbeing, 2. Suggests suitable proxy data for the measurement of each of these domains, and 3. Identifies the feasibility of developing a rural wellbeing toolkit and outlines the next steps for developing this, taking into account policy needs.