Whilst achieving Indigenous wellbeing is a goal in itself, the participation of Indigenous peoples and their world views in the development of what “wellbeing” means as well as the frameworks used to measure progress towards wellbeing is a crucial means towards the goal (Gooda 2010). Using a mixed-methods approach, this doctoral research aims to explore how wellbeing is defined and experienced by an Indigenous community living in a remote coastal town of Western Australia by gender and across the different age groups.

There were two interrelated stages in the qualitative component of the research. The first stage involved semi-structured interviews to conceptualise ideas of a good life and living well. The themes and indicators generated from the interviews provided the pool of potential indicators for the second stage, where focus group participants undertook activities to select relevant indicators generated from interviews. The information generated through this participatory process will provide the foundation for the quantitative component which involves a survey instrument and embedded in the survey, a Best-Worst Scaling experiment for determining the weights in the future phases of the research.