Positive Mental Well-being in Australian Adolescents: Evaluating the Warwick-Edinburgh Mental Well-being Scale

Abstract

While there is increasing recognition of the need to go beyond measures of mental ill health, there is a relative dearth of validated tools for assessing mental wellbeing among adolescents. The Warwick-Edinburgh Mental Wellbeing Scale (WEMWBS) is a promising tool for use in this context, and this study evaluated its use in an Australian context. The WEBWBS was completed by 829 Western Australian adolescents, aged 13 to 16 years old, drawn from grades 8, 9 and 10 in seven separate high schools. Using confirmatory factor analytic techniques, the utility of the full 14-item scale was not supported but good fit for a previously validated seven-item short version (SWEMWBS) was supported. Strong measurement invariance was demonstrated across age and weak measurement invariance was demonstrated across gender. The scale has good internal reliability. There were no differences in SWEMWBS scores across Grades 8 to 10. Overall, the SWEMWBS represents a useful tool for educational, developmental, and school psychologists investigating positive mental wellbeing in younger adolescents.

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“…Positive mental well-being is an important protective factor against mental health problems [ 29 ], including anxiety. It also influences health, social outcomes, and psychological functioning [ 30 ]. Positive mental well-being includes both hedonic and eudemonic aspects of well-being [ 31 ].…”

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“…This is because research consistently reports sex and age effects upon CDI 2 scores (Twenge & Nolen-Hoeksema, 2002). However, in other studies, the age effects pertaining to the SWEMWBS have disappeared after adjusting for sex (Clarke et al, 2011), and the absence of age effects on the SWEMWBS has also been reported for young people in Australia (Hunter et al, 2015). The full model is shown in Figure 1.…”

“…However, while excellent fit statistics were reported for the 14item WEMWBS (GFI = 1.000, RMSEA = 0.003) with data from 1,650 13-to 16-yearolds (Clarke et al, 2011), follow-up interviews identified issues of concern pertaining to definition and understanding of items and potential for misinterpretation of items. In another study of 829 Australian 13-to 16-year-olds, the shortened 7-item version (i.e., SWEMWBS) demonstrated a better fit than the 14-item version: χ 2 (df = 13) = 30.75, p = .004, CMIN/DF = 2.37; CFI = .99; RMSEA = .040 (90% CI [.022, .020]) and provided higher levels of internal reliability (Cronbach's alpha = .87; Hunter, Houghton, & Wood, 2015).…”

“…Each of the seven items receive a factor score weight that is applied to the participants' scores. All scores are added together to produce a final score (see Hunter et al, 2015), with higher scores representing higher levels of positive mental wellbeing.…”

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“…WEMWBS from data supplied by 1,650, 13 -16 year olds. More recently,Hunter, Houghton, and Wood (2015) found the full 14-item measurement model demonstrated marginal fit: CFI = .93, RMSEA = .080, while the shortened 7-item model demonstrated better fit: CFI = .98, RMSEA = .066 (n = 829, 13 -16 year olds).ProcedurePermission to conduct the research was initially obtained from the Human Research Ethics Committee of the administering University and the State Department of Education. In addition, it was ensured that all procedures complied with the ethical standards of the Australian Psychological Society Code of Ethics (2007) (Australian Psychological Society, 2007) and the Helsinki Declaration of 1975 (as revised in 2008).…”