Measurement Invariance of Personal Well-being Index (PWI-8) across 26 Countries

The Mental Health Continuum – Short Form is a brief scale measuring positive human functioning. The study aimed to examine the factor structure and to explore the crosscultural utility of the MHC-SF using bifactor models and exploratory structural equation modelling (ESEM). Method: Using multigroup confirmatory analysis (MGCFA) we examined the measurement invariance of the MHC-SF in 38 countries (university students, N = 8,066; 61.73% women, mean age 21.55 years). Results: MGCFA supported the cross-cultural replicability of a bifactor structure and a metric level of invariance between student samples. The average proportion of variance explained by the general factor was high (ECV = .66), suggesting that the three aspects of mental health (emotional, social, and psychological well-being) can be treated as a single dimension of well-being. Conclusion: The metric level of invariance offers the possibility of comparing correlates and predictors of positive mental functioning across countries; however, the comparison of the levels of mental health across countries is not possible due to lack of scalar invariance. Our study has preliminary character and could serve as an initial assessment of the structure of the MHC-SF across different cultural settings. Further studies on general populations are required for extending our findings

The Fear of COVID-19 Scale: Its Structure and Measurement Invariance Across 48 Countries

COVID-19 has been a source of fear around the world. We asked whether the measurement of this fear is trust worthy and comparable across countries. In particular, we explored the measurement invariance and cross-cultural replicability of the widely-used Fear of COVID-19scale(FCV-19S), testing community samples from 48countries (N= 14,558). The findings indicate that the FCV-19Shas a somewhat problematic structure, yet the one-factor solution is replicable across cultural contexts and could be used in studies that compare people who vary on gender and educational level. The validity of the scale is supported by a consistent pattern of positive correlations with perceived stress and general anxiety. However, given the unclear structure of the FCV-19S, we recommend using latent factor scores, instead of raw scores, especially in cross-cultural comparisons