Measuring the psychosocial wellbeing of Rohingya mothers

The myriad ways in which culture shapes both experiences and expressions of mental wellbeing and distress have been increasingly recognized, leading to cautions against an assumption that psychosocial measures are equally valid across a range of cultures and contexts.

While there has been increased attention to culturally and contextually specific measurements of distress within global mental health research, recent reviews have highlighted that there is less consensus on how to best measure other key mental health and psychosocial domains (e.g., wellbeing, coping, social behavior, and social connectedness).

This discrepancy in the focus of psychosocial measurement has also been raised in calls for greater conceptual clarity when considering both clinical and social-environmental intervention models, while efforts such as the Inter-Agency Standing Committee (IASC)’s Common Monitoring and Evaluation Framework have catalyzed new progress in evaluation.

To improve the evidence-base for prevention and promotion programming targeting a broader array of psychosocial outcomes among highly impacted populations, increased attention to their measurement is needed.

 Even as the IASC has recently released updates to the Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) Framework that include guidance on means of verification, there is a continued need to disseminate findings on the validity, reliability, feasibility, and relevance of the most commonly used measurement tools in under-studied populations to advance both programming and research.