Does cognitive ability influence responses to the Warwick-Edinburgh Mental Well-Being Scale?

Area of Science:

• Psychometrics
• Cognitive Psychology
• Sociology

Background:

• Self-report questionnaires rely on cognitive processing for item response.
• Cognitive ability may influence the structure and interpretation of questionnaire data.
• The Warwick-Edinburgh Mental Well-Being Scale (WEMWBS) is a widely used measure of mental well-being.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate if the Warwick-Edinburgh Mental Well-Being Scale (WEMWBS) items form a hierarchy.
• To examine if this hierarchy varies based on an individual's cognitive ability.
• To assess the impact of cognitive ability on the psychometric properties of the WEMWBS.

Main Methods:

• Utilized Mokken scaling analysis on data from the National Child Development Survey (NCDS).
• Analyzed 14 items of the WEMWBS completed by participants at age 50.
• Compared Mokken scaling results across three cognitive ability groups (based on age 11 scores).

Main Results:

• A moderately strong, unidimensional item hierarchy was found for the overall sample (H = 0.48).
• Only medium and high cognitive ability groups demonstrated acceptable invariant item ordering (HT statistic ≥ 0.3).
• This pattern persisted when analyzing men and women separately.

Conclusions:

• Cognitive ability significantly affects the hierarchical structure of the WEMWBS.
• The content validity of mental well-being questionnaires may not be consistent across all cognitive ability levels.
• Further attention to content validity is crucial for ensuring questionnaire applicability across diverse cognitive abilities.