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CHAPTER 2.3. POLICY APPLICATION: WHAT'S THE QUESTION?
Culture and sport and the cross cutting agenda
3.1 The 'cross cutting' approach of much debate on government policy in the UK at national ( UK and Scottish) and local level implies that policies of culture and sport need to be set within a wider policy framework. Given the multi-dimensional nature of quality of life and well-being this makes perfect sense. But, how is government tackling the issue of measuring the impact of its policies more generally on quality of life? Is there something to be learnt from other areas, for example, from policy relating to social and community development?
3.2 Treacherous to begin with, once we move into the area of policy literature the terms 'quality of life', 'well-being', and notions of 'happiness' are similarly not clearly defined and, as we have seen in the literature review, notions of the quality of life of the community have become linked with the additional idea of 'sustainability'.
3.3 What is also clear from the policy debates is that governments want to measure the impact of their policy making on quality of life/well-being/sustainability in communities. This has spawned the idea of indicators - which are seen to be the means by which one can, at the very least, be seen to measure improvements in the delivery of services which leads to better quality of life and sustainable communities.
Measuring: creating indicators
3.4 A review of international policy approaches undertaken by the Centre for Urban and Regional Studies at the University of Birmingham ( CURS) acknowledges the difference between an approach which looks at quality of life as something which is personal and defined by the individual, and that which seeks to measure external life conditions. It sees these very different approaches to definition as being 'points of departure' for the policy makers, suggesting, truthfully but problematically, that quality of life 'can mean different things to different people'. The review continues, 'regardless of how studies start what they are all striving for is a set of key headings or categories that broadly capture or describe the important aspects of quality of life'. 418 In other words, and in an extraordinarily counterintuitive feat, the definition of quality of life is often predicated on how it is measured.
3.5 The UK government's approach to quality of life is highlighted in work of the Audit Commission in England and Wales introducing a project to develop a set of voluntary quality of life indicators for local authorities which reflect, among other things, the Local Agenda 21. 419 Referring back to the literature review we can see that here quality of life is being used as an 'organising concept'(p.10).
3.6 These indicators are all concerned with external factors, or so-called 'life conditions', and are not at all focused on the individuals' view. In addition, the Audit Commission is demonstrably concerned with benchmarks, or standards; that is, objective measures against which various conditions are measured.
3.7 UK government thinking identifies three broad areas, or domains: economic, social, and, environmental well-being. These three domains derive 32 indicators, many of which are linked to the best value performance indicators which local government collects as part of performance management systems. Included in the indicators are those relating to 'satisfaction with neighbourhood' and 'finding it easy to access local services'. Both are measured using satisfaction surveys containing references to local cultural and sporting facilities. 420 This approach has the advantage of creating a large data set able to be reviewed at a local and national level, which is also, presumably, able to be built on and developed over time, thus giving a long-term view of change. However, somewhat fatally, the approach suggests that the selection of the indicators is driven by data availability rather than theory. It is also difficult to draw very meaningful conclusions for an area, or for a group, based on one set of indicators to cover every local authority in the country. The plan also suffers from an issue we will see in other macro approaches: the production of a very unwieldy and unrefined data set.
Community indicators
3.8 Similar issues are highlighted in the review by CURS which concludes, from the international comparators, that there is the potential for a huge number of indicators which are collected at macro - meaning national or regional - level, thus presenting problems of relevance for community based organisations. 421 The CURS researchers advocate a more community-focused approach and promote their own 'tool book' which includes environmental (built and wider), economic, social and health domains. The methods for developing indicators is based on data gathering through existing data sources at a local level and 'quality of life' questionnaires which set out to gather data on individuals' living conditions and also gauge their satisfaction with their neighbourhood.
3.9 A similar approach is advocated by the New Economics Foundation ( NEF) which has developed a conceptual framework around the individual. It agues that:
[L]ocal authorities need to consider how economic, social and environmental well-being links with, and is influenced by, people's personal well-being. Indeed we propose that these areas are important precisely because of their effect on people's personal well-being. By placing people's well-being at the core of policy formation, councils can be more innovative and potentially more efficient and effective too. 422
3.10 However, in its 1998 guide to community sustainability, NEF rather blatantly avoids the issue of definition:
Quality of life, sustainability, social inclusion, community development... whatever name we give to this process in our communities, people are interested in finding answers to the questions that affect us all. What's going on in your community? What is happening to people's health? What state is the education system in? Is crime on the increase? Is the environment in trouble? How is our local economy getting on? Is it getting easier to travel from A to B? 423
3.11 It could be argued that the answer to the question 'what state is the education system in?' [sic] may or may not have an impact on quality of life and it is this lack of clarity in definition of what is meant by the terms used - and the policy objective - that creates problems when looking at the development of indicators.
3.12 When it comes to developing methods for measuring well-being, NEF spells out a detailed and inclusive process for developing community-based indicators which, unlike the Audit Commission's approach, is intended to be different for every community in order to reflect different needs and concerns. However, the examples given are all focused on quantitative data; for example, the level of air or water pollution or the distance travelled to amenities, the number of new businesses established, etc. But, still, NEF has taken the ideas further and applied this approach to a project looking at young people and quality of life in a collaboration with the City of Nottingham Council.
3.13 The aim of the NEF project was to find out more about measuring well-being by using, what is termed, a 'multi-dimensional' approach. A survey of over 1,000 children was undertaken in the Nottingham area using questionnaires which were designed to measure scales of 'life satisfaction and curiosity.' 424 The latter - curiosity - was used as an indicator of a child's capacity for personal development. The research concludes that 'there is more to life than satisfaction' and identifies a 'second dimension' to well-being which they term 'personal development': the assumption being that well-being was not only to do with satisfaction but also with capacity for development.
3.14 This was a pilot project but it did also identify some methodological difficulties in sample sizes and the wording of some of the questions. It also relied heavily on one type of methodological tool, the survey. Again sport and culture feature but only as one of a range of pastimes or, as the survey had it, 'favourite activities.' 425
What this debate tells us about culture and sport policy
3.15 The wider policy debates on community development, and how government measures success in improving quality of life or well-being, tells us: that there is a lack of a clear definition of what is meant by these terms and, thus, a lack of policy focus; that there are broadly three 'domains': economic, social and environmental; and, that indicators tend to be measured on the basis of existing quantitative data sources, augmented by some qualitative survey work. We can also see that the local council area is the preferred focus for this work - presumably since it is a recognisable geographic area which operates within a political and policy framework, and, also, because there already exist within such contexts processes and procedures for capturing data.
3.16 These approaches are concerned, of course, with the quality of the output but do not tell us how the quality of the input might affect what happens. For example, having a school within walking distance may be good but not if it is a failing school: that is, having a school within walking distance may have a positive impact on the objective measuring of 'quality of life' but if it is a failing school the overall impact may be less positive. There is also no debate around causality. While there might be scientific evidence as to why air quality affects well-being, it is less clear why, for example, simply being a member of a voluntary organisation - expressed purely as quantitative data (and there is an example of this in the CURS questionnaire) - is relevant to quality of life.
3.17 Finally, on this wider area, the literature review reveals that the presence of cultural or sporting indicators is, to say the least, patchy. There are some measures relating to access, to amenities or to services but this is not consistently part of the quality of life indicators. This might be considered surprising since support for culture and sport at local level in particular has, over the last few years, become linked to the social inclusion agenda, as well as to economic development. This may, in part, be explained by the focus on the local authority area not least because, in England and Wales, there is, with the exception of libraries, no statutory obligation for local councils to provide arts and sport activities and facilities. If, as has been argued, the indicators are driven by data availability then it is not surprising that in some frameworks, a non-statutory area is missing. But, even when they are included, reliance on existing data sources - for example, best value performance indicators - means that some of the indicators in culture and sport are limited, verging on meaningless. For example, we might suggest that the number of books borrowed from the library service, a statutory performance indicator for local authorities, tells us very little about the quality of life in an area.
3.18 Moreover, if, as we have argued, the approach is 'audit driven' a means of assessing how far a standard has been met, or a benchmark attained, then we might speculate as to what 'standards' are appropriate for culture and sport. It is possible to argue that the provision of facilities or activities per head of population might be a benchmark of some sort. But, as a participant in a drama project or as someone who attends a jazz concert, we might also expect 'standards' of a different sort. It is also debatable what 'standard' is required to ensure improved quality of life.
3.19 We are, therefore, faced with increasing problems about agreeing what it is we are actually measuring.
3.20 In the area of measuring the particular impact of culture on quality of life/well-being, we have a 'double whammy' of definition vacuum: not only is there no clear definition of quality of life/well-being, but there is also the familiar and the equally slippery issue of how to define culture.
Whose definition?
3.21 There is, if not a pragmatic solution to this, at least a political one because politicians and governments can take a view on their policy goals that will require, at the very least, a working definition of culture, and what and how they want to affect in our communities.
3.22 Rather than setting standards, an alternative approach to enhancing quality of life/well-being is to move away from a 'top down' approach and ask the community what matters to them. This 'bottom up' approach is based on community consultation and demands a different approach to data collection. It is also the approach which is taken in defining culture in the cultural planning model where mapping the culture, in its broadest sense, in a local area is considered an important point of departure. We explore this in the next section.
3.23 What this review tells us, however, is that, in the wider policy literature relating to quality of life and well-being, there is no clear definition of terms and that, the absence of such, leads to a lack of clarity in the policy focus. This, in turn, leads to a 'back to front' approach to enhancing quality of life and well-being in communities and for individuals: what can be measured is measured, and what is measured drives the policy. The development of new ways of measuring tends to focus on the quantitative with qualitative measures focusing on satisfaction surveys. Anything even attempting a comprehensive approach to measuring the impact on quality of life can lead to unwieldy data sets.
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