Well-being Star
Well-being Star overview
Creator and Context
The Well-being Star is the Outcomes Star designed for people living with a long term health condition, supporting self management and person centred care.
It was developed by Sara Burns and Joy MacKeith at Triangle Consulting Social Enterprise in 2013, with North East Essex PCT and Department of Health funding. The second edition was published in 2018.
Like the rest of the Outcomes Star family, it requires an organisational licence and mandatory worker training.
Presenting Conditions
The Well-being Star covers eight areas:
Your lifestyle
Looking after yourself
Managing symptoms
Work, volunteering and other activities
Money
Where you live
Family and friends
Feeling positive
Administration
Can be completed collaboratively with a worker or genuinely self completed, and Triangle publishes dedicated guidance for self completion. This is a real difference from the Recovery Star.
Each area is rated on a 1 to 5 scale anchored to a five stage Journey of Change: not thinking about it, finding out, making changes, getting there, and as good as it could be.
Desired Audience
Adults living with a long term health condition. The validation cohort spanned ages 16 to 95.
Long term condition management lives or dies on what the person does between appointments. The Well-being Star is designed to make that visible and to give the person something they can act on themselves, which is why it can be self completed.
Considerations
There are no cut offs, no bands and no total score. Interpretation is visual and area by area.
The 5 point scale is less sensitive to change than the 10 point scale used in other Stars.
All published psychometric evidence is publisher generated. No independent peer reviewed validation of the Well-being Star specifically was located.
A licence and mandatory training are required.
How to score the Well-being Star
Conducting the assessment
The person, alone or with a worker, rates each of the eight areas from 1 to 5 against the Journey of Change descriptors.
Interpretation
Each area scores 1 to 5 and is plotted on a star chart.
There is no total score and no cut offs. A large, rounded star suggests the person is doing most of what they can. A small or uneven star suggests areas where more could be done.
In the publisher's own validation, inter rater reliability was good, with an average Krippendorff's alpha of 0.81, and internal consistency was 0.82.
Clinical Considerations
Use the star as the agenda for the conversation, not as a score to be reported upward.
Where the person self completes, review it together rather than filing it.
Be honest about the evidence. It is a good structured conversation, not a validated clinical outcome measure.
Well-being Star use cases
Supporting self management in long term conditions
Structuring social prescribing and health coaching conversations
Recording distance travelled across a support relationship
Service level outcome reporting
Category
General Well-being
Research Summary
Burns, S., & MacKeith, J. (2013). The Well-being Star: Summary guidance. Brighton: Triangle Consulting Social Enterprise.
Triangle Consulting Social Enterprise. (2018). Outcomes Star Psychometric Factsheet: Well-being Star.
MacKeith, J. (2014). Assessing the reliability of the Outcomes Star in research and practice. Housing, Care and Support, 17(4), 188 to 197.
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