Abstract Improving human wellbeing is a major focus of international environmental and sustainable development policy. However, clearly defined measures of wellbeing are needed as an empirical base for the formulation and evaluation of policies. Despite conceptual progress towards agreement of universally relevant dimensions of wellbeing, consensus is still lacking on how to translate these dimensions into locally appropriate indicators to measure wellbeing in different contexts. This paper focuses on three interrelated challenges associated with this knowledge gap: (1) navigating trade-offs between complexity versus simplicity of concept; (2) integrating top-down and bottom-up perspectives; (3) ensuring a cost-effective and flexible approach suitable for different policy contexts. We contribute to filling this gap by developing a step-by-step Wellbeing Indicator Selection Protocol (WISP) for measuring wellbeing. The protocol integrates perspectives through an interdisciplinary mixed methods design that includes cross-validation between quantitative approaches of redundancy analysis and statistical modelling and qualitative approaches of focus groups and thematic analysis. In this way we promote a pragmatic approach suitable for a range of social and environmental contexts. We tested WISP in rural Tanzania, identifying 111 candidate wellbeing indicators. This list was simplified to a subset of 19 indicators that retained 91 % of measured variation among all wellbeing indicators. The simplified list was representative of both a multidimensional concept of wellbeing and the diversity of opinions sampled. We conclude that the protocol provides practical, statistically validated guidance to support the design of wellbeing assessments, maintaining coherence between universal theory and local realities.

中文翻译：

---

衡量人类福祉：选择当地指标的协议

摘要 改善人类福祉是国际环境和可持续发展政策的重点。然而，需要明确定义的福利衡量标准作为制定和评估政策的经验基础。尽管在就普遍相关的福祉维度达成一致方面取得了概念上的进展，但在如何将这些维度转化为适合当地的指标以衡量不同背景下的福祉方面仍缺乏共识。本文重点关注与此知识差距相关的三个相互关联的挑战：(1) 在概念的复杂性与简单性之间进行权衡；(2) 整合自上而下和自下而上的视角；(3) 确保采用适合不同政策背景的具有成本效益和灵活的方法。我们通过开发用于衡量幸福感的分步幸福感指标选择协议 (WISP) 来填补这一空白。该协议通过跨学科混合方法设计整合观点，包括冗余分析和统计建模的定量方法与焦点小组和主题分析的定性方法之间的交叉验证。通过这种方式，我们提倡一种适用于各种社会和环境背景的务实方法。我们在坦桑尼亚农村测试了 WISP，确定了 111 个候选幸福指标。该列表被简化为 19 个指标的子集，保留了所有福祉指标中 91% 的测量变化。简化的清单代表了幸福的多维概念和抽样意见的多样性。