The Executive Office has published statistics on individual wellbeing for 2024/25 across four areas: loneliness (how often people feel lonely); self-efficacy (people’s belief in their ability to influence events affecting their lives); personal wellbeing (life satisfaction, happiness, anxiety, and whether activities feel worthwhile); and locus of control (the extent to which people feel in control of their lives, with an internal locus indicating personal influence and an external locus indicating control by outside factors).

For the report, self-efficacy and locus of control are measured on scales from 5 to 25, while personal wellbeing measures are on scales from 0 to 10. Higher scores indicate better outcomes for self-efficacy, life satisfaction, worthwhile, happiness and locus of control, whereas lower scores indicate better outcomes for anxiety. All reported differences between groups are statistically significant.

Overall personal wellbeing was consistent with 2023/24, with average life satisfaction, worthwhile and happiness remaining "high", and anxiety remaining "low". Levels of self-efficacy, locus of control and the proportion experiencing loneliness "at least some of the time" were also unchanged from 2023/24. Across specific indicators, 33% reported very high life satisfaction, 36% reported very high happiness and 41% reported very high feelings that what they do is worthwhile. In terms of anxiety, 43% recorded very low levels, while 20% reported high levels. In total, 17.9% said they felt lonely "at least some of the time".

As in 2023/24, people who rated their health as "very good" reported stronger wellbeing than those who rated their health as "bad/very bad", and people with a disability continued to report lower wellbeing than those without a disability. Those who are married or in a civil partnership reported the lowest levels of loneliness, higher self-efficacy and better personal wellbeing compared with other marital status groups.

Wellbeing also varied by area deprivation and employment status. People living in the most deprived areas (quintile 1) reported lower individual wellbeing than those in the least deprived areas (quintile 5), and people in employment reported better wellbeing than those not in employment.

The full report is available at: www.executiveoffice-ni.gov.uk/publications/individual-wellbeing-northern-ireland-report-202425