6.21 Subjective wellbeing evidence aims to capture the direct impact of a policy on wellbeing. The evidence can challenge decision makers to think carefully about the full range of an intervention's impacts and to consider a wider range of interventions. The evidence can also help challenge implicit values placed on impacts by providing a better idea of the relative value of non-market goods.
6.22 The use of subjective wellbeing approaches in assessing the long-list of options is explained in Chapter 4. For use in short-list appraisal it may be appropriate to use subjective wellbeing as the outcome variable for Social CEA in certain circumstances.15 It is recognised that the methodology continues to evolve16 and it may be particularly useful in certain policy areas, for example community cohesion, children and families. Where valuations are considered robust enough for inclusion in Social CBA, benefits or costs must not be double counted, which could occur if a benefit or cost arising from a policy were counted by different valuation methods.
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15 Where there is evidence that wellbeing fully captures all the outcomes affected by a proposal and there is sufficient evidence available for different options being considered.
16 The What Works Centre for Wellbeing have published a guide on the use of wellbeing evidence in cost-effectiveness analysis, available on the analyst web page: https://www.whatworkswellbeing.org/appraisal.