Children’s perspectives on scale response options of subjective well-being measures: A comparison between numerical and verbal-response formats

It is crucial to establish the validity of existing measures of children’s subjective well-being (SWB) for use within specific contexts. Two important measurement issues that implicate the validly of SWB scales are ‘question framing’ and ‘response options’. Fundamental to the latter is the concept of scale granularity, which refers to the number of response options imposed on a scale. However, the majority of studies on the topic have used adult and not child samples. The overarching aim of the study was to explore how children from three different contexts (Catalonia, Cape Town and North-Western Romania) perceive, understand, and make sense of SWB instruments, using focus group interviews and thematic analysis. A key finding of the study was the similarities in children’s understandings of the response options across these contexts. While this does not represent a claim for a ‘universal understanding’ of measurement scale response formats, it is suggesting that there are similar cognitive processes that children across the contexts apply when making sense of and deciding on which response option to endorse (for both verbal and numerical formats)

Children’s subjective well-being: Multi-group analysis among a sample of children from two socio-economic status groups in the Western Cape, South Africa

Recent advancements in child well-being research have shown an increased importance of subjective well-being in understanding children and adolescents’ quality of life. These advancements have raised questions concerning the extent to which children’s subjective perceptions and experiences of well-being can be compared between countries and across diverse cultures. With a dearth of empirical data on cross-cultural comparisons, the validation of existing measures and cross-cultural comparisons have been identified by a number of researchers as critical in contributing to this process, and ultimately to the international dialogue on children’s overall quality of life. The aim of the current study was to test two measures of subjective well-being (the Students’ Life Satisfaction Scale and the Personal Well-Being Index-School Children) among a sample of children in the Western Cape region of South Africa. Noting the diversity of living experiences between children from different socio-economic status groups in South Africa, the study further aimed to determine the extent to which the measures are comparable across socio-economic status groups. Data from the first wave of the Children’s World Survey were used; and included a sample of 1004 12 year old children randomly selected from 15 schools within the Cape Town Metropole. Located within the goodness of fit theoretical framework, confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modelling was used to test the overall fit structure; while multi-group factor analysis was used to test measurement invariance across socio-economic status groups. The results show appropriate fit structure for the overall model, with metric and scalar factor invariance tenable across socio-economic status groups. The overall findings suggest that the two measures are appropriate for use with children from low and middle socio-economic status groups in the Western Cape province of South Africa and that the two groups can be compared by correlations, regressions and means.IS

Examination of the Subjective Well-Being of Australian Internet Child Exploitation Investigators

Objective Internet child exploitation investigation is an area of policing associated with high levels of work stress, potentially contributing to the development of mental and other health‐related problems. This study extends prior research suggesting that child abuse investigation officers have normal levels of life satisfaction using a well‐validated and more robust measure of subjective well‐being. Method The Personal Wellbeing Index (PWI) was self‐completed by a representative sub‐sample of Australian police officers (N = 139) who work in a confronting and challenging area of child abuse investigation (Internet child exploitation). Their data were compared to a comparative sample of 102 non‐Internet child exploitation police officers and participants of the first 28 surveys of the Australian Unity Wellbeing Index (N = 55,697). Results Consistent with previous research, mean subjective well‐being for Internet child exploitation officers was above the Australian adult normative range and comparable to the control group of non‐child abuse police investigators. Analysis of domain‐based satisfaction judgments comprising the PWI revealed that satisfaction with “Relationships” and “Achieving in Life” contributed more variance to the prediction of life satisfaction than in the comparative mainstream Australian sample. Conclusion Australian police officers who work in Internet child exploitation investigation have a higher‐than‐normal level of subjective well‐being. These results attest to the resilience of these investigators in their ability to withstand the confronting nature of their work and handling potentially significant sources of negative workplace stress. The results also highlight the importance role that organisational and informal social support plays in facilitating this resilience.No Full Tex

Effect of the Demographic Variables and Psychometric Properties of the Personal Well-Being Index for School Children in India

The Personal Well-being Index-school children (PWI-SC; Cummins and Lau 2005) measures well-being of adolescents. The study aimed at validating psychometric properties for the English and the Hindi translated version of PWI-SC in Indian context. Data from 1,301 students, aged 13–18 years (mean age = 15.40 years, SD = 1.33) was collected. The English and Hindi version confirmed one-factor solution of the PWI-SC. The convergent validity was supported through positive correlations with Flourishing Scale (FS; Diener et al. 2010) and Brief Multidimensional Students Life Satisfaction Scale (BMSLSS; Huebner et al. 2004). The effect of demographic variables on different domains of PWI-SC indicated that adolescents who resided in rural areas and those who attended private school possessed a significantly higher score on PWI-SC. Well-being declined as age increased from early adolescent to middle adolescence to late adolescence. The results of this study are in agreement with the previous literature