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

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 September 2015

Simon C. Hunter Open the ORCID record for Simon C. Hunter [Opens in a new window] ,
Stephen Houghton  and
Lisa Wood
Simon C. Hunter*
Affiliation:
School of Psychological Sciences and Health, University of Strathclyde, GlasgowUK; Honorary Research Fellow, Graduate School of Education, The University of WesternAustralia
Stephen Houghton
Affiliation:
Graduate School of Education, The University of WesternAustralia
Lisa Wood
Affiliation:
Centre for the Built Environment and Health, The University of WesternAustralia
*
Address for correspondence: Dr Simon C. Hunter, School of Psychological Sciences and Health, 40 George Street, University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, UK. Email: simon.hunter@strath.ac.uk
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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 well-being among adolescents. The Warwick-Edinburgh Mental Well-being Scale (WEMWBS) is a promising tool for use in this context, and this study evaluated its use in an Australian context. The WEMWBS was completed by 829 Western Australian adolescents, aged from 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.

Keywords

wellbeingWEMWBSadolescence
Type
Articles
Information
The Educational and Developmental Psychologist , Volume 32 , Issue 2 , December 2015 , pp. 93 - 104
Copyright
Copyright © Australian Psychological Society Ltd 2015 

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