The key messages are:

• ​In the measurement of multidimensional well-being, weights aim to capture the relative importance of each component to a person’s overall well-being. The choice of weights needs to be explicit and could be used to incorporate people’s perspectives into a final metric.
  
• Stated preferences approaches aim to obtain weights from individuals’ responses to hypothetical scenarios. We outline six of these approaches. Understanding their design and limitations is vital to make sense of potentially dissimilar results.
  
• It is important to select and test an appropriate method for specific contexts, considering the challenges of relying on people’s answers. Two methodologies, DCE and PTO, are put forward for testing in a pilot project.