Report on Malaysian Family Well-Being Index 2016

Orem (1985) suggested that well-being is a term used to describe an individual’s perception of their lives. Well-being refers to the integration of physical, social, mental, emotional, spiritual and social characteristics. Some social science researchers have explained the concept of well-being as internal constructs that may be separate from the external conditions (Hartweg, 1990; Orem, 1985). For example, irrespective of whether the individual is healthy or not, well-being can still be achieved.

The NPFDB (2011) defines family well-being as a safe, healthy, comfortable, harmonious and satisfying family condition. This definition covers various aspects, such as spiritual satisfaction and comfort in respect of their economy and finance; mental, psychosocial, and health; political; and sustainability. Family well-being can be examined in terms of family type, family process, individual characteristics and family circumstances. Family type for example can be explained in terms of whether an individual lives with a mother or a father or with both parents, cohabitation, single mother, single father or separated. Family well-being then needs to be described in terms of family process in which conflicts can be identified, history in family relationship, attitude towards parenting skills, family roles and other factors. Family type and family process is not enough to describe family well-being without the component of individual characteristics such as personality together with family circumstances that has to go through various life events, education, social class, working hours and other elements.

Ministry of Women, Family and Community Development through National Population and Family Development Board has developed Malaysian’s Family Well Being Index in year 2011. It provided a benchmark of Malaysian family well-being measuring seven domains and 23 indicators. The index score obtained in 2011 was 7.55 on a maximum score of 10.00. In year 2016, measurement on the Malaysian Family Well Being Index 2016 (FWBI 2016) has been implemented. FWBI 2016 has maintain all the seven domains consist in FWBI 2011, and has added one more domain namely Family and Communication Technology.