Abstract
The Mental Health Continuum – Short Form (MHC-SF) is a well-established measure that assesses general well-being and three well-being components: emotional, social, and psychological. However, its psychometric properties have never been investigated in a psychiatric sample. We examined the psychometric properties of the MHC-SF, including factor structure, convergent validity, and sensitivity to change, in 768 patients attending a psychiatric partial hospital program. Patients completed the MHC-SF as well as self-report measures of depression, and motivation and pleasure at admission and discharge from the program. Results revealed that a Bifactor Exploratory Structural Equation Modeling (ESEM) model better fit the data than competing models (Confirmatory Factor Analysis, ESEM, and Bifactor models). This model supported the existence of a general well-being factor, but provided limited evidence for the existence of emotional, social, or psychological well-being factors. The MHC-SF negatively correlated with a measure of depression and positively correlated with a measure of motivation and pleasure, suggesting good convergent validity. General well-being increased significantly from pre- to post-treatment. Results support the use of the MHC-SF to reliably measure general well-being in a psychiatric sample.
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Notes
We calculated omega coefficients for the total score as detailed by Rodriguez et al. (2016), where λ corresponds to factor loadings and (1-h2) to error variances for each item. Similar calculations apply for omega coefficients for subscales (see Rodriguez et al. 2016).
\( {\displaystyle \begin{array}{c}\omega =\frac{{\left(\sum {\lambda}_{general}\right)}^2+{\left(\sum {\lambda}_{emotional}\right)}^2+{\left(\sum {\lambda}_{social}\right)}^2+{\left(\sum {\lambda}_{phsycho\mathit{\log} ical}\right)}^2}{{\left(\sum {\lambda}_{general}\right)}^2+{\left(\sum {\lambda}_{emotional}\right)}^2+{\left(\sum {\lambda}_{social}\right)}^2+{\left(\sum {\lambda}_{phsycho\mathit{\log} ical}\right)}^2+\sum \left(1-{h}^2\right)}=\frac{88.47+1.89+3.07+0.75}{88.47+1.89+3.07+0.75+5.26}=.95\\ {}{\omega}_h=\frac{{\left(\sum {\lambda}_{general}\right)}^2}{{\left(\sum {\lambda}_{general}\right)}^2+{\left(\sum {\lambda}_{emotional}\right)}^2+{\left(\sum {\lambda}_{social}\right)}^2+{\left(\sum {\lambda}_{phsycho\mathit{\log} ical}\right)}^2+\sum \left(1-{h}^2\right)}=\frac{88.47}{88.47+1.89+3.07+0.75+5.26}=.89\end{array}} \)
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Silverman, A.L., Forgeard, M., Beard, C. et al. Psychometric Properties of the Mental Health Continuum – Short Form in a Psychiatric Sample. J well-being assess 2, 57–73 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s41543-018-0011-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s41543-018-0011-3