Disability Sports Australia‘s “Abilities Unleashed” program was designed to do more than provide a one-day sporting experience.

Delivered nationally across 28 events, the program introduces people with disability to inclusive and adaptive sports, helping participants discover activities they enjoy, build confidence and understand what opportunities are available to them within their local community.

The intended impact is not simply participation on the day. The real goal is to create a pathway into ongoing participation in sport and recreation.

Disability Sports Australia (DSA) had great data, around the number of sessions provided, how many attendees and how many volunteers, but like many organisations, they wanted to understand and show the true social value being created through the program. However, an important question emerged early in the process:

How do you measure long term impact when collecting long term data is difficult?

Many of the participants rely on carers, support workers or family members to assist with surveys and evaluation activities. While collecting immediate feedback was achievable, repeated follow up surveys created practical challenges and risked adding burden to participants and carers.

This meant Disability Sports Australia faced a dilemma common across disability, aged care and community services:

The outcomes that are easiest to measure are often not the outcomes that matter most.

While DSA had strong participation data and clear evidence that the event was connecting people with disability to local sport and recreation opportunities, demonstrating the broader value of these outcomes remained a challenge. Many of the most significant benefits occur after the event itself, as participants go on to join clubs, become more physically active, build social connections, and improve their wellbeing over time.

This is where the Australian Social Value Bank (ASVB) came in. DSA joined the ASVB Grant Program, working alongside other organisations seeking to better understand and communicate their social impact, with dedicated support from the ASVB team. Through this process, DSA was able to demonstrate not only the value of the outcomes directly evidenced through its existing data collection, but also the likely social value generated through the downstream impacts of the program. This provided a practical way to quantify the broader benefits created when people with disability are connected to local sport and recreation opportunities and supported to participate in their communities.

The first step was to focus on outcomes that could be directly evidenced through participant data.

Working with DSA, the ASVB team identified two outcomes that best represented the immediate change experienced by participants:

• Increased opportunity to engage in preferred physical activity
• Participation in physical activity by people with disability

Across the 693 participants who attended an Abilities Unleashed event and completed the survey, the analysis demonstrated significant immediate social value created through participation in the program.

The valuation identified:

• $505,806 in total social value
• $52,206 net social benefit
• Benefit Cost Ratio of 1.12 or $1.12 return for every dollar invested

While these results demonstrated substantial value being created through the events, both DSA and the ASVB team recognised that they were unlikely to represent the full impact of the program. The survey data captured the immediate outcomes experienced by participants on the day, but the program was designed to create broader and longer lasting change.

To better understand this wider impact, DSA and ASVB reviewed additional data sources collected by DSA facilitators including volunteer and co-ordinator feedback responses. This led to the identification of further social value created through volunteer involvement and the development of a projection model to estimate the likely value generated when participants continue engaging in sport, recreation and community activities following the event.

Together, this additional analysis helped create a more complete picture of the social value generated by Abilities Unleashed. It highlighted the importance of combining participant data, stakeholder insights and program knowledge to better understand the full impact of a program and the value it creates over time.

As DSA and the ASVB team explored additional sources of evidence, it became clear that the value created by Abilities Unleashed extended beyond the participants attending the events.

One important area of impact was the program’s volunteer workforce. Abilities Unleashed relies on volunteers to support event delivery, many of whom gain valuable experience, skills and confidence through their involvement in inclusive sport and recreation programs.

Using volunteer feedback DSA identified:

• 90 volunteers contributing to program delivery over the reporting period
• 67 volunteers indicating improved skills and confidence through their involvement
• $68,721 in additional social value

This demonstrated that the value created by Abilities Unleashed extended beyond event participants alone. In addition to supporting people with disability to participate in sport and recreation, the program was also creating value for volunteers by building skills, confidence and experience in the delivery of inclusive sporting opportunities.

By incorporating volunteer outcomes alongside participant outcomes, DSA was able to develop a more complete picture of the value being created through the program and ensure that important benefits were not left out of the analysis.

When combined with the participant outcomes identified through the event surveys, the analysis demonstrated:

• $574,527 in total social value
• $120,927 in net social benefit
• Benefit Cost Ratio of 1.27

To explore the longer-term impact of Abilities Unleashed, DSA and the ASVB team developed a projection model to estimate the value that could be created if participants continued engaging in sport and recreation after attending the event.

While the participant surveys provided robust evidence of immediate outcomes, the purpose of Abilities Unleashed is not simply to create a positive experience on the day. The program is designed to connect people with disability to ongoing sporting opportunities, increase confidence to participate, and create pathways into community sport and recreation.

Like many organisations working with underrepresented cohorts, DSA faced practical challenges in collecting long-term follow-up data. Rather than ignoring these potential outcomes, the project drew on the best available evidence to understand what may happen next.

The model combined:

• Participant survey results
• Program facilitator observations and experience
• Disability Sports Australia’s understanding of participant pathways
• Published research on disability sport participation and sustained engagement
• Conservative and transparent assumptions

Research commissioned by the Australian Sports Commission¹ found that many people with disability want to participate in sport and recreation but face barriers including accessibility, transport, cost and availability of suitable opportunities. This suggests that low participation rates are often driven by barriers rather than a lack of interest.

Additional research² examining participants in the HandbikeBattle program found that more than 90% of participants remained engaged in sport between 1.5 and 5.5 years after completing the program. Researchers concluded that structured sporting experiences can support sustained participation through confidence building, skill development, peer support and social connection.

A separate study of adaptive sports participation among adults with stroke³ found that adaptive sports programs were safe, feasible and well accepted, resulting in increased physical activity levels among participants. Participants identified health benefits, fitness and enjoyment as key motivators for ongoing participation.

Together, this evidence suggests that when barriers are reduced and participants are connected with appropriate opportunities, ongoing participation in sport is a realistic and achievable outcome for many people with disability.

Drawing on this research, together with DSA’s experience supporting participants into local sporting opportunities, a conservative assumption was adopted that 50% of participants would transition into ongoing participation in sport or recreation for one 6 month season, following the event.

The 50% participation assumption was intentionally selected as a conservative midpoint, recognising both the strong evidence that participation can be sustained when barriers are removed² ³ and the practical barriers that continue to limit participation for many people with disability.¹

Under this scenario:

• 346 participants would continue participating in sport
• $565,148 in additional social value could be created

When combined with the participant and volunteer outcomes already identified, the analysis demonstrated:

• $1,139,674 in total social value
• $686,074 in net social benefit
• Benefit Cost Ratio of 2.51

By combining participant outcomes, volunteer impacts and a conservative projection of ongoing participation, Disability Sports Australia was able to develop a more complete understanding of the value created through Abilities Unleashed.

The process demonstrated that social value measurement is not simply about calculating a final number. It is about understanding how change occurs, who experiences that change, and how different sources of evidence can be brought together to tell a more complete impact story.

The initial participant surveys provided robust evidence of the immediate value created through the events. Additional stakeholder engagement highlighted the contribution volunteers were making and the benefits they were experiencing themselves. Discussions with program facilitators then identified an important question that could not yet be answered through existing data alone: what happens after participants leave the event?

Exploring this question through transparent and conservative forecasting allowed DSA to better understand the potential longer-term value of creating pathways into ongoing sport and recreation. While these projected outcomes require future verification, the exercise highlighted both the likely scale of impact being created and the importance of continuing to strengthen data collection over time.

Rather than producing a single social value figure, the project helped build a richer understanding of how Abilities Unleashed creates value for participants, volunteers and the broader community. In doing so, it demonstrated that impact measurement is an ongoing journey of learning, refinement and continuous improvement.

1. Understanding impact requires listening to all stakeholders

Participant surveys provided valuable evidence about the immediate outcomes experienced through Abilities Unleashed. However, discussions with Disability Sports Australia highlighted that important changes were also occurring for volunteers and through participants’ ongoing engagement with sport beyond the event itself.

By engaging with different stakeholders, the analysis was able to identify impacts that would not have been visible through participant survey data alone. This reinforced a key principle of social value measurement: understanding value requires listening to the people who experience change and considering how different groups may be affected by a program.

2. Different forms of evidence answer different questions

Participant survey data helped demonstrate what had already been achieved through the program. Volunteer feedback provided insight into benefits experienced by another stakeholder group, while projection modelling helped explore the potential value created through ongoing participation in sport and recreation.

Together, these different forms of evidence provided a more complete understanding of program impact than any single source could have achieved on its own.

3. Social value often extends beyond the primary beneficiary

The analysis showed that value was being created not only for participants, but also for volunteers who gained skills, confidence and experience through their involvement in the program.

4. Research can strengthen impact measurement

Not every outcome can be measured immediately. Organisations often need to make decisions before long-term data becomes available, particularly when working with cohorts where follow-up data collection is challenging.

In these situations, published research, stakeholder insights and program knowledge can help organisations develop evidence-informed assumptions about likely outcomes. While these assumptions should always be transparent and conservative, they provide a practical way to explore potential impact and identify priorities for future evaluation.

For Disability Sports Australia, research on disability sport participation helped provide additional confidence that ongoing engagement in sport was a reasonable outcome to model, even though it had not yet been directly measured.

5. Measuring impact is a journey

Perhaps the most valuable outcome of the project was not the final social value figure. It was the deeper understanding gained about how the program creates value, who experiences that value, and what evidence is needed to demonstrate it.

The project began with participant survey data, expanded to include volunteer outcomes, and then drew on stakeholder insights and published research to explore longer-term impacts. Each step added another piece to the story.

For Disability Sports Australia, the ASVB process provided a practical framework for bringing together multiple forms of evidence to communicate both demonstrated and potential impact. It also identified clear opportunities for future data collection, allowing the organisation to continue strengthening its understanding of the value created through Abilities Unleashed.

1. Australian Sports Commission. AusPlay Data Portal: Sport-related participation – frequency of participation. Accessed May 2026.
2. de Groot S, Kouwijzer I, Valent L, et al. Sport participation after the HandbikeBattle: benefits, barriers, facilitators from the event – a follow-up survey. Spinal Cord Series and Cases. 2020;6:54.
3. Nayak P, Mahmood A, Kumaran S, Natarajan M, Unnikrishnan B, Solomon JM. Adaptive sports for promoting physical activity in community-dwelling adults with stroke: A feasibility study. Journal of Bodywork and Movement Therapies. 2021;28:341–347.

Learn more about our Sports Values here

GippSport has taken a leadership role in advancing how the sport sector understands, measures, and communicates its value – while also helping shape its future direction.

Like many organisations, GippSport recognised that traditional reporting methods, focused on participation numbers and activity counts, did not fully capture the broader outcomes created through sport. While these measures show who takes part, they provide limited insight into what changes as a result.

To address this, GippSport adopted the Australian Social Value Bank (ASVB), enabling a shift from output reporting to consistently measuring outcomes and social value.

Through applying the ASVB in practice, two key opportunities emerged:

• to better reflect the specific outcomes created through sport participation, and
• to ensure the framework captures what matters most for young people

This led to a partnership to develop sport-specific values within the ASVB, supported by VicHealth.

This work has now evolved into a critical next phase: the development of youth-specific sport values, seen as essential to fully capturing the long-term impact of sport and strengthening how the sector measures social value.

Historically, organisations across the sport sector have relied on participation data and qualitative storytelling to demonstrate impact. While both are valuable, they make it difficult to consistently quantify outcomes, compare programs on a like-for-like basis and clearly understand return on investment

For GippSport, this created a practical challenge.

Despite strong community connections and deep local knowledge, there was no consistent way to:

• identify which programs delivered the greatest social value relative to investment
• confidently prioritise funding, effort, and program design
• clearly demonstrate the scale and nature of impact to funders and stakeholders

As a result, decisions were often guided by experience and intent, rather than supported by a shared, comparable measure of value.

This challenge is even more pronounced in youth-focused programs, where many of the outcomes that matter most, such as confidence, connection and wellbeing, can be difficult to consistently measure and value.

By adopting the ASVB, GippSport can now measure program outcomes in a consistent, comparable, and credible way.

Rather than focusing solely on participation, they can quantify changes in wellbeing, including social connection, confidence and capability to participate, inclusion for people with disability, and levels of physical activity.

Crucially, these outcomes are translated into a common measure of social value, enabling GippSport to:

• understand value created across programs
• compare initiatives on a like-for-like basis
• identify which approaches deliver the greatest impact
• clearly communicate outcomes to funders, partners, and communities

GippSport’s approach has gone beyond simply adopting a measurement framework.

Through applying the ASVB across a range of programs, they identified the need for values that more accurately reflect the outcomes created through sport participation.

In response, GippSport played a key role in developing sport-specific values within the ASVB, supported by VicHealth.

Rather than adapting programs to fit the tool, GippSport helped shape the tool to better fit the sector. This has strengthened confidence in comparing programs and improved the quality of evidence used to inform decision making.

Importantly, this work laid the foundation for the next phase – ensuring the framework captures the distinct  impacts experienced by young people through sport.

A shared approach to measuring social value does more than improve reporting – it strengthens decision making across the entire sector.

By using a consistent framework like the ASVB, organisations contribute to a shared evidence base where outcomes are clearly defined, measured consistently and valued using the same approach.

This enables meaningful comparison across programs, regions, and cohorts, clearer understanding of what works and why, and a more strategic allocation of funding and resources.

This consistency becomes even more critical when considering youth outcomes, where early intervention can have lifelong impact but requires strong, trusted evidence to support investment.

Without a shared framework, impact remains fragmented – making it difficult to demonstrate value at a system level or build a compelling case for sustained investment.

For GippSport, this is particularly important within the Regional Sport Assembly network, where a shared approach creates opportunities to understand collective impact across communities.

Over time, a sector-wide approach enables stronger evidence-based advocacy, better alignment between programs and community need, and the ability to demonstrate the collective value of sport.

This shifts the conversation – from participation and activity, to outcomes, impact, and value – positioning sport as a critical contributor to community wellbeing.

GippSport sees social value measurement as critical to the future of sport, particularly as funding continues to shift towards outcomes-based models.

Through this work, a key gap has emerged: youth outcomes are not yet accurately captured.

While sport-specific values represent a significant step forward, applying adult-based values to young people limits the sector’s ability to fully demonstrate impact.

To address this, GippSport is now supporting the next phase of development, with additional funding secured to expand the ASVB to include youth-specific sport outcome values.

This investment will improve the accuracy of outcomes for young people, strengthen confidence in early intervention and better demonstrate the lifelong value of sport participation.

By embedding youth-specific values, the sector will be better equipped to evidence impact, influence policy, and secure sustained investment in young people.

GippSport’s experience demonstrates that investing in shared measurement doesn’t just improve reporting – it strengthens decision making, builds sector-wide evidence, and enables more strategic investment.

Most importantly, it highlights that youth-specific measurement is not optional – it is essential to understanding the true value of sport.

As the sector continues to shift towards outcomes and impact, this work positions sport as a critical contributor to lifelong wellbeing and ensures that investment in sport is backed by clear, credible evidence at both a local and national level.

The ASVB offers a grant program for not-for-profits and certified social enterprises, with an annual revenue of less than $1.5M, to access the ASVB for free.

These grants are funded through the sale of large and very large ASVB subscriptions (based on our sliding fee scale).

Our grant program is our way of helping to make sure any organisation can demonstrate the social value created by their programs and is the foundation of our social enterprise model.

VIEW SLIDING FEE SCALE

Successful grant applicants are awarded a fully supported 12 month subscription to the ASVB. This means the organisation can add unlimited users to the ASVB from across their organisation, they can run unlimited social value impact calculations and download an unlimited number of Social Impact Valuation Statements.

Grantees will receive free online training and support throughout their subscription period to ensure they are confident in applying the ASVB methodology correctly.

An ASVB Grant can help micro organisations in a number of ways:

• Build the internal social impact measurement capacity of the organisation
• Forecast the social value that could potentially be created by a program to secure funding prior to delivery
• Report the social value delivered through past programs to add evidence to funding bids or show social return on investment to existing funders
• Use social value calculations to inform internal budget allocation and program improvement
• Include in Annual Reports to demonstrate progress against Mission

1 – Are you an Australian business that is either a registered not-for-profit or a certified social enterprise? If you answered ‘Yes’ move on to step 2.

2 – Download our current ASVB Outcomes List and check that we have the main outcomes that your program delivers. (You will need to identify three from the list to include in your ASVB Grant Application).

3 – Get a copy of your previous year’s audited financial statements to prove that your annual revenue is less than $1.5M

(If you’re a start-up, or don’t have audited financial statements, please get in touch via email (info@asvb.com.au) to discuss other acceptable forms of evidence to verify your annual income)

4 – Complete the online ASVB Grant application form, then sit back and wait for us to get in touch.

APPLY FOR ASVB GRANT

Please note that if there are no ASVB Grants available when you apply, all eligible grant applications received will be added to our Grant Waiting List in order of receipt. Successful applicants will then be notified as soon as a grant becomes available.

We’re always so excited to announce that we’re adding new values to the ASVB – but these two values seem especially important given everything that is going on in the world lately. With the extreme climate events we’ve experienced in Australia, the recent floods and the not too distant Black Summer bushfires, not to mention the ongoing pandemic encompassing extended lockdowns for many – you could say Australians have been doing it tough over the past few years!

Apart from the immediate losses that come with climate disasters, like losing one’s home and community, the prolonged emotional stress caused by the pandemic, financial pressures that come with loss of employment, increased social isolation, unhealthy emotional eating and reduced physical activity has taken it’s toll on our mental health. Our ASVB wellbeing values show us how much it’s worth to improve our wellbeing across each of these different areas.

But when it comes to the social wellbeing and mental health aspects of  “disaster recovery”, whether that disaster happens to be a flood, fire or pandemic, we’re primarily focused on increasing two things: people’s resilience and help-seeking behaviours.

The word “resilience” has become a bit of a catch-all phrase, but it’s really about having the capacity to recover quickly from difficulties. The flip side of this is to be able to recognise when you’re struggling and take steps to seek help. With so much work being funded in these areas, we felt it was important to look at the value these outcomes bring to people’s wellbeing.

That’s why we were so excited to partner with Mates in Construction (MATES) to undertake this research.

Suicide rates in the construction industry are 80% higher than in the general working age population, with that resulting in the loss of a construction worker every second day to suicide. In fact, construction workers are six times more likely to die from suicide than an accident at work.

It was based on statistics like these that Mates in Construction was founded to deliver a research-based suicide prevention program specifically focusing on the construction industry. MATES has since diversified to deliver suicide prevention programs into the mining and energy sectors, and more recently into pilot programs in manufacturing and apprentices

MATES is a research-based organisation with its own Academic Research Reference Group who have developed extensive peer-reviewed evaluations of their program, demonstrating that the MATES program does save lives. MATES research indicates there’s been at least an 8-10% reduction in suicide since its inception in 2008.

For those of you who understand the wellbeing valuation methodology used by the ASVB, you’ll know that our preference is to derive values based on existing national datasets. This helps to ensure the rigour of the dataset and that there is a large enough, nationally representative sample to use.

A small silver lining for us from the pandemic, was that additional questions were added to Wave 20 of the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) survey. This was a government response to try to further understand the impacts the pandemic was having on Australians.

The additional Coronavirus module in Wave 20 included a whole range of questions about how the pandemic had affected people; had they had the virus, how great was the general impact on their lives, did it effect their employment, their home life, their diet, their physical activity, alcohol and tobacco consumption, charity work, consumption of TV and streaming content, access to digital technology, social contact, social distancing. You name it, they asked it!

Thankfully for us, they also added a panel of four questions covering resilience and self-reliance as seen in the below image.

The panel includes a 2-item version of the Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale (CD-RISC), questions a and c above. (Vaishnavi S, Connor K, Davidson JRT. 2007. An abbreviated version of the Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale (CD-RISC), the CD-RISC 2: psychometric properties and application in psychopharmacological trials. Psychiatry Research, 152: 293-297.)

The other two items, b and d, are drawn from the 46-item version of the Conformity of Masculinity Norms Inventory [CNMI] (Hammer JH, Heath PJ & Vogel DL. 2018. Fate of the total score: Dimensionality of the Conformity to Masculine Role Norms Inventory (CMNI-46). Psychology of Men & Masculinity, 19: 645-651).

When our partners Simetrica-Jacobs conducted the analysis of the data, they were able to derive a value for increased resilience based on the two items from the CD-RISC, but the analysis of how the two self-reliance items related to each other was less clear cut. They tried a couple of alternative specifications that involved question b, but found it did not really seem to have much of an influence. They made the decision to to just use the data from question d to reduce complication for our ASVB users when applying the value.

As the self-reliance questions were taken from an instrument originally relating specifically to attitudes among men, Simetrica-Jacobs looked at the impact on that specific group in the data, but didn’t find any significant differences between sexes, so again chose to not over complicate application for our ASVB users.

Both of the values derived had high statistical significance and passed Simetrica-Jacobs quality assurance processes.

As a result of only using one of the items from the self-reliance questions, we have decided to list this value as “Increased help-seeking” rather than “Increased self-reliance” as we feel this more accurately reflects someone having increased willingness to seek help when needed.

If you are delivering programs such as mental health and suicide prevention programs, disaster recovery programs, or any programs that focus on creating the outcomes of increasing people’s resilience or the willingness to seek help when needed, these values are now available to apply within the ASVB Value Calculator.

If you’re already an ASVB Subscriber, please download the current version of the ASVB User Guide, for guidance on applying the Resilience and Help-seeking values.

For those interested in learning more about the ASVB and how you might use these values to measure the social impact of your programs, please get in touch on info@asvb.com.au.

The revenue generated from operating social and affordable housing in Australia is insufficient to finance new social and affordable homes. As a consequence, the provision of social and affordable housing is dependent on government subsidy, internal resources or philanthropic grant funding to become financially viable.

Social and affordable rental housing does, however, provide a series of wider social and economic benefits (WSEB) that generate cost savings across public and private sectors.

This project involves developing a tool that enables social and affordable housing project proposals to estimate these project-specific, wider social and economic benefits, and in turn strengthen the business case for new developments. It will provide comprehensive economic justifications for the use of external resources that would assist new supply, arguments that more accurately reflect the social outcomes that occur through the provision of social and affordable housing.

The Australian Social Value Bank has teamed-up with Swinburne University of Technology, Community Housing Industry Association (CHIA) and Shelter NSW to bring the Social & Green Benefits Calculator project to life.

Swinburne University will take the lead, developing the Cost Benefit Analysis spreadsheet tool, which will include existing ASVB wellbeing values. We will continue to work with our existing partners, Simetrica-Jacobs, to undertake the research to quantify the associated environmental/ green benefits that will be included in the new tool.

The project is being managed by CHIA who will be assisted by Shelter NSW.

1. An excel based module for estimating project specific direct WSEB arising from the tenure and housing affordability aspects of new social and affordable rental housing.
2. Australia specific estimates of household benefits from access to urban green space and / or property design features such as private gardens, balconies.
3. An excel based module for estimating project specific WSEB associated with wellbeing, environmental and climate impacts of new social and affordable rental housing developments.
4. A user / training module that provides guidance on how to use the two excel modules; and how to incorporate results in business case development.

FUNDRAISING

We have already received grant funding from philanthropic sources and donations from other non profit organisations totalling $80,000. We are seeking support from government agencies, the private sector, and other non profits to get us to our goal of $140,000.
There is no minimum contribution – all are welcome. Our goal is to hit our funding target by the end of June 2022.

BETA TESTING

If you are a Community Housing Provider and an existing ASVB Subscriber who would like to be involved in beta testing the new Social & Green Benefits Calculator, please get in touch with Min on mins@asvb.com.au.

For further information about the Social & Green Benefits Calculator please download the flyer below.

The Australian Social Value Bank first went live in 2016. Our original set of wellbeing values were based on two data sets: The Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) survey and the Journeys Home survey.

The Journeys Home survey was the largest and most comprehensive longitudinal survey of homelessness in Australia. It  was funded by the Australian Government through the Department of Social Services, designed by Melbourne Institute, and the fieldwork was undertaken by Roy Morgan Research.

Journeys Home was launched in 2011 and tracked the movements of 1700 Australians who identified as homeless or housing insecure.  Six waves of data were collected; wave 1 in 2011, with the next five surveys conducted at six-monthly intervals, with the final survey, Wave 6, completed in 2014.

All six waves of data were used by Simetrica-Jacobs to derive the original wellbeing values based on Journeys Home.

The HILDA survey is a household-based panel study that commenced in 2001. It follows the lives of more than 17,000 Australians each year, and is the only study of its kind in Australia. It is also funded by the Australian Government through the Department of Social Services and is  designed and managed by The Melbourne Institute. Roy Morgan Research have been appointed to collect the data for Waves 9 to 23.

The HILDA data contains information on many aspects of Australian life, including household and family relationships, income and employment, and health and education. Participants are followed over the course of their lifetime.

The original wellbeing values in the ASVB were based on the first 15 waves of HILDA data.

In 2021 our friends at Simetrica-Jacobs  used an additional four waves of HILDA data to run their regression analysis on so that the updated wellbeing values are now based on 19 waves of HILDA data. Incorporating this additional data means that the majority of the values will have increased, some by a lot, but some of the values  have in fact decreased.

For example, the wellbeing value for “Improved English language skills for non-native speakers” dropped in value by roughly 30%. We could hypothesise why this might be; for example increased access to improved technology like “Google Translate” making language skills less of a barrier, or perhaps an increase in government information being disseminated in a wider range of languages.

In truth we don’t really know why the social value of improving English skills decreased by so much, only that the data shows that was the experience of the Australians in the HILDA survey.

The values derived from the Journeys Home data have also been updated, but as there are no new waves of this survey, they have all been increased to adjust for CPI (Consumer Price Index). This is also the case for the secondary benefits included in the Calculator.

The updated wellbeing values have already been integrated into the ASVB Value Calculator and will automatically be applied to any new calculations. Even if new calculations are performed retrospectively for programs that may have been delivered in previous years, the calculator will still use the current set of values. This is because social value should be calculated in terms of Net Present Value (NPV), or what the value of the program is now, in today’s context.

Previously finalised impact calculations in the tool should remain as they are, so be mindful that if you go in and edit an old calculation, it will automatically update using the current set of social values, which can not be reversed. Whilst this will generally result in greater total net benefits, there will be some instances where the total social value created by a program may decrease.

If you’re a current ASVB subscriber, and have any questions about how this may effect your calculations, please don’t hesitate to get in touch on info@asvb.com.au.