Reliability and validity of the Personal Wellness Profile (PWP) Questionnaire in African American college women

The Personal Wellness Profile (PWP) is a 75-item questionnaire used to assess an individual's level of wellness in clinical and non-clinical settings. Currently, there are no published scientific data regarding the validity and reliability of the PWP. Therefore, this study was designed to assess convergence validity of the PWP using established instruments in which validity has been previously supported and to determine the reliability of the PWP using the test-retest method.

A correlational design was used with a non-probability convenience sample of 100 African American women, ages 18 to 40 years, enrolled in a university in southern Louisiana. Convergence validity of the PWP was assessed by using the Michigan Alcoholism Screening Test (MAST), Drug Abuse Screening Test (DAST), Geiselman Food Preference Questionnaire II (GFPQ II), Weekly Stress Inventory (WSI), Fagerstrom Test for Nicotine Dependence (FTND), and the 7-Day Physical Activity Recall Questionnaire (PAR) as criteria.

The PWP had statistically significant correlations with two of the six subscales of the GFPQ II, and with the WSI, MAST, and FNTD. Findings also suggest that the PWP has moderate to moderately high internal consistency as a whole (r = .77), and that the subscale scores were also reliable over time (r = .52 to .90).

The PWP will be valuable as a valid, standardized, highly portable tool that can be taken into the community and administered to African-Americans and other populations who do not readily have access to treatment, research and health care centers.