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ARS Home » Plains Area » Mandan, North Dakota » Northern Great Plains Research Laboratory » Research » Publications at this Location » Publication #430758
Research Project: Transdisciplinary Research that Improves the Productivity and Sustainability of Northern Great Plains Agroecosystems and the Well-Being of the Communities They Serve

Location: Northern Great Plains Research Laboratory

Title: Soil Health and Well-Being: Development of a reliable and valid psychometric scale to measure intangible benefits and social outcomes of agroecosystems

Author
item Friedrichsen, Claire
item HAMMOND, WAGNER - US Department Of Agriculture (USDA)
item PEPLINSKI, HANNAH - University Of Vermont
item Jones, William

Submitted to: Environmental and Sustainability Indicators
Publication Type: Peer Reviewed Journal
Publication Acceptance Date: 7/13/2026
Publication Date: 7/14/2026
Citation: Friedrichsen, C.N., Hammond, W., Peplinski, H., Jones, W.D. 2026. Soil Health and Well-Being: Development of a reliable and valid psychometric scale to measure intangible benefits and social outcomes of agroecosystems. Environmental and Sustainability Indicators. 31, 101418. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.indic.2026.101418.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.indic.2026.101418

Interpretive Summary: People often adopt soil health practices because of non-economic benefits, things that we cannot put a dollar value on. But these benefits, like well-being or health of community are hard to measure with numbers. Using a scientifically rigorous method for creating strong and trustworthy measurement tools, we developed a Soil Health and Well-Being (SHWB) scale. This scale has two versions: a short 6-question version and a longer 18-question version. Both versions are designed to measure how soil health practices influence personal and community well-being. We found that both versions of the scale are reliable, based on test-retest results of a sample of U.S. agricultural producers. They also show good validity because they match well with other well-being tools and can tell the difference between people who use soil health practices and those who do not. The SHWB scale is a useful way to track the benefits of soil health over time, measure social sustainability, and explain the non-economic benefits of soil health practices to farmers and policy makers.

Technical Abstract: : Adoption and persistence of soil health management is often driven by non-economic in-tangible benefits. However, it is difficult to quantitatively measure the intangible benefits and social outcomes of soil health management. Subjective well-being is context specific and therefore task specific psychometric scales need to be developed to measure direct connection between environmental management and its specific impact on an individual and their larger community. A methodology for building reliable and valid psychometric scales was followed develop a short 6-item and long 18-item Soil Health and Well-Being (SHWB) scale to measure social outcomes at both the perceived individual and community well-being scales. We find that our scale, both the long and short version of the scale, are reliable, as evidenced through test-retest agreement, and exhibits content validity through comparison with existing well-being instruments and the ability to differentiate between groups of soil health practice adopters and non-adopters. The SHWB is valuable to track benefits of soil health over time, provide quantification of social sustainability indicators, and to communicate intangible benefits of soil health management to producers and policy makers.