Confirmatory factor analysis and reliability of the Mental Health Inventory for Australian adolescents

Ostroff, Woolverton, Berry, and Lesko in 1996 examined the adolescent subsample of Veit and Ware's 1983 normative data for the Mental Health Inventory and recommended a two-factor rather than the original five-factor model for the assessment of adolescents' mental health. Analysis of a 30-item version with a new independent sample of 878 adolescents in another English-speaking country supported a two-factor model of psychological well-being and distress for boys and girls. Internal consistency was > .9, and scores were stable (approximately .7) over a 10-wk. period. Boys reported slightly better mental health than girls, as in the original American research.