Measurement of Hedonic and Eudaimonic Orientations to Happiness: The Spanish Orientations to Happiness Scale

Understanding happiness and well-being has been one of the central issues for psychologists in recent decades. Happiness orientations have been identified as important pathways toward different types of well-being, and so the development and validation of scales for their measurement is an important step in their study. The present research aims to adapt and validate the Spanish Orientations to Happiness Scale (SOTH), a 6-item scale based on the Orientations to Happiness Questionnaire. This brief scale, which measures hedonic and eudemonic orientations, was administered to 1,647 Spanish workers. Scale structure was subjected to exploratory (EFA) and confirmatory (CFA) factor analysis to obtain evidence of factorial validity. Evidence for convergent validity was assessed by correlating the scale with two measures of hedonic and eudaimonic well-being, and discriminant validity was assessed with the average variance extracted (AVE). Results of EFA showed a two-factor solution, and CFA partially supported this structure, χ2(8, N = 793) = 36.61, p .72) and valid (AVE = .50), and so it is a valuable tool for assessing orientations to happiness in the Spanish context. Finally, the scientific value and practical utility of the scale are discussed.