The purpose of our project is to create measures of psychological well-being that can be used in both applied and research settings in the medical and health areas. Current measures focus primarily on psychological symptoms and negative states. The measures we will create include these areas, but cast a broader net and include positive states.
Three reviews on well-being constructs (meaning and purpose, social relationship quality, and mastery/achievement, respectively) and health have been conducted. These reviews synthesized a substantial amount of existing research evidence to reveal the association between well-being and physical health. Two measures of positive emotion, meaning, relationships, and accomplishment have been developed and validated through four studies with over 2000 participants. One scale has 60 items with subscales on a range of well-being dimensions and facets that will be used for research purposes and for comprehensive assessment of well-being in health settings, such as in psychiatric and clinical practices. The other is a checklist of 10 items for use primarily in medical practices such as the initial assessment of a patient to give a succinct view of the patient’s overall psychological strengths and weaknesses, and to alert practitioners should some intervention be needed. An additional study is being planned to validate the scales with international samples.
