- What can the wellbeing wheel evaluate?
- How do I use the wellbeing wheel to evaluate an arts project?
- What are wellbeing indicators?
- How can I help participants to go through the evaluation process?
- How do I interpret the findings of the evaluation?
- Are there any issues of ethics or confidentiality I should bear in mind when using the wellbeing wheel?
- Where can I access further information about the wellbeing wheel?
- What should I do if I have a technical problem when using the wellbeing wheel?
- How do I contact the site administrator?
Q: What can the wellbeing wheel evaluate?
A: The wellbeing wheel has been designed as a tool for assessing the impact of participating in arts and cultural activities. The methodology allows participants in arts and cultural activities to choose their own indicators of wellbeing, based on either the strengths and qualities they feel they are bringing to the project or the personal outcomes they are hoping to achieve. The wellbeing wheel is designed to evaluate projects which run over time rather than one-off events or workshops.
The wellbeing wheel provides a visual representation of participants' overall sense of wellbeing and their quality of life at the beginning and end of the project, and also provides data in a quantitative form, as well as gathering more qualitative information about the reasons for any positive or negative shifts in wellbeing.
Q: How do I use the wellbeing wheel to evaluate an arts project?
A: You can test drive the wellbeing wheel by clicking on the link on the home page. If you then wish to use the wheel to evaluate a project, you can set up an evaluation on this website by registering with the site and then clicking on the 'create a new group' link and following the instructions.
Q: What are wellbeing indicators?
A: The wellbeing indicators are a list of words participants can choose from to build up their individual wellbeing profile. Examples include friendship, creativity and health. Participants will be offered a choice of 10 words and should pick ones which relate to their reasons for taking part in the project. These may be related to strengths and personal qualities they are confident about and feel they are bringing to the project, or areas of their personal lives they are hoping will improve or change as a result of their participation.
The wellbeing indicators are also grouped into different categories (based on Maslow's theory of the hierarchy of needs), and this will allow evaluators to see whether, across the whole group, projects have a strong impact on particular aspects of wellbeing.
Q: How can I help participants to go through the evaluation process?
A: Participants may need guidance during the process of choosing their wellbeing indicators. Based on the piloting of this evaluation methodology, Impacts 08 suggests that the most common issues arising will be:
- Helping your participants to understand that they should choose their indicators on the basis of their reasons for taking part in the project, and then choose a mixture of strengths and qualities they already feel confident about, and aspects of life they wish to change or improve through their participation.
- Ensure that participants understand that the answers to the qualitative questions which follow their completion of the wellbeing wheel should relate to their experience of taking part in the project, and not to their experience of completing the wellbeing wheel.
- Assuring participants that they can choose wellbeing indicators based on their own understanding of the personal meaning of those words, and that there are no right or wrong choices. For example, in one project some participants chose the word respect, meaning the desire to increase other people's respect for them as individuals, while others chose to interpret respect as meaning their own levels of understanding and respect for others.
- It is possible that some participants may find completion of the wellbeing wheel raises personal issues and stirs emotions. We would strongly advise that you allow time for individual discussion with any participants who may wish to talk through issues arising from completing the wellbeing wheel.
Q: How do I interpret the findings of the evaluation?
A: When participants have completed the wellbeing wheel and supplementary questions at the start and end of the project, project leaders and evaluators will be able to generate a report from this website. This report will contain a list of all the wellbeing indicators chosen by the group, and a statistical analysis of the amount of positive or negative change the group has experienced against individual indicators, and indicators grouped into themes. The report will also print off all of the group's responses to the supplementary questions, which will provide additional information to support the quantitative data.
The report will therefore indicate clearly what level of impact the project has had on the wellbeing of the group, and what type of wellbeing impacts have been felt most strongly, as well as providing background information which may help to explain the reasons for these changes.
Q: Are there any issues of ethics or confidentiality I should bear in mind when using the wellbeing wheel?
A: By using this site, project leaders and evaluators are allowing Impacts 08 to have access to the data from their projects. This may be used in a variety of ways, such as to gather together the data from lots of projects to create an overview of the impacts of the arts on wellbeing. However we will never case study an individual project or participant without contacting the project leader in advance for permission.
We would advise that when project leaders register participants on the site, they can do so using numbers or initials as user names rather than the full names of participants. This will ensure that Impacts 08 do not have access to this information. However, if this is done, project leaders are strongly advised to maintain a list of the user names they have given to their participants, in order to facilitate the process of logging in to complete the evaluation. It may be difficult to remember the user names of group members when completing the second part of the wellbeing wheel evaluation some weeks or months after the initial stage.
Q: Where can I access further information about the wellbeing wheel?
A: Background information about the development of the wellbeing wheel, including findings from two small pilot projects, are available from
Q: What should I do if I have a technical problem when using the wellbeing wheel?
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