What is Social Wellbeing?

For school students, peers are the critical source of social connection 

No student is an island. Peers are the critical factor in whether students enjoy school, or they don’t. Bullying, exclusion, ridicule - this is peer-to-peer territory. All schools know the importance of this. But do you have a systematic way of measuring social and mental wellbeing? While mental health is often mistakenly seen as relating only to the individual student, we know that bullying can severely impact student wellbeing. We need to measure student connections and their impact. 

According to Boston University, “social wellbeing is building and maintaining healthy relationships and having meaningful, authentic interactions with others”. VicHealth notes that “building and maintaining social connections with friends and family is essential for our health and wellbeing”.

School leaders and teachers have some insights into student connections in their own head, but this differs from teacher to teacher. But imagine hearing from the students themselves and getting comprehensive map of peer-to-peer connections – the good and the bad – of the whole student eco-system. With SNA Toolbox, you can.

Victoria's Framework for Improving Student Outcomes (FISO 2.0) indicates that social wellbeing relates to sociological perspectives (Pollard & Lee, 2003). It refers to interpersonal wellbeing and encompasses an individual’s perception of trust, empathy, peer relationships and mutual obligations (Fraillon, 2004). It also encompasses the extent to which individuals connect to others and experience positive relationships, including prosocial behaviours and empathy (NSW Government, 2015). It can also include an individual’s sense of belonging (OCDSB, 2015)."

SNA Toolbox’s social wellbeing metrics are a unique contribution to understanding student wellbeing. Through the use of Social Network Analysis (SNA), SNA Toolbox maps out peer-to-peer relationships and is able to provide individualised scores of students social wellbeing as well as year-level and school-level assessments of overall social wellbeing. 

At SNA Toolbox, we consider social wellbeing from two perspectives - the benefits students receive from their peers, as well as the value they give to others. Without knowing peer-to-peer social connections (i.e., without collecting social network data that is central to SNA Toolbox) it would not be possible to fully understand what value students receive from their relationships with others - including both positive (e.g., friendship) and negative (e.g., disrespect) relations. 

Our state-of-the-art software platform provides this dual level of insight into student social wellbeing. Get more than half of the picture.

Australia's youth: Peer relationships and social networks indicates in pre-COVID times that 98% of 16-17 year olds in Australia reported they had at least 1 good friend (Longitudinal Study of Australian Children). Where do the students in your school sit?

This is what makes SNA Toolbox a unique approach to measuring and understanding social wellbeing. By viewing peer-to-peer relationships as a network, your school gets a complete view of the social wellbeing ecosystem of your students, and for the first time have some evidence-based metrics on the impact of peers on other students.