Generic well-being outcomes: towards a conceptual framework for well-being outcomes in museums

The concept of well-being is now widely used in policy, including in the museum sector. This article addresses the need for museums to understand and be able to measure their contribution to this increasingly important instrumental value, if they are to engage with the policy. However, due to the indefinite and inconsistent definition of the concept, it is difficult to know what to measure. There are also difficulties capturing this amorphous outcome to allow for generalisability and to assign causality - the key needs of policy-oriented research and evaluation. The article outlines these issues and looks at psychology, economics, healthcare and culture for insight. It also suggests a tentative Well-being Outcomes Framework that could be used consistently in the sector, to measure evidence and advocate for museums' contribution to well-being.