A Randomised Enquiry on the Interaction Between Wellbeing and Citizenship

Abstract

Wellbeing and citizenship have been outlined as important components for personal flour- ishing and involvement in community life. The Community Engagement Project aimed to identify the strength of the relationship between wellbeing and citizenship. In addi- tion, the study aimed to investigate the capability of changing wellbeing and citizenship levels over time after exposure to a short experiment which also involved the following variables; Social Justice Beliefs, Assertiveness, Justice and Care Values. An interven- tion research design was implemented with a self-selected sample; 28 participants from the experimental group and 24 participants from the control group completed the final follow-up. Correlational results supported our first hypothesis as a statistically significant positive relationship was found between all the citizenship and wellbeing subscales. Sup- port was found for within group differences for Personal Responsibility and Social Justice Beliefs indicating that this short experiment was able to influence these variables from pre to post. The repeated measures analysis of variance demonstrated that when consider- ing time and condition the subjective perception of greater Legal Rights increased after the experiment only for the intervention group. Professionals could use the findings to provide a platform for vulnerable groups by providing the resources to be more assertive which could improve overall wellbeing and sense of citizenship.