Developing a Six-Item Short Form of Ryff's Psychological Well-Being Measure: Demonstration of Short Form Development...

Area of Science:

• Psychology
• Psychometrics
• Sociology

Background:

• Psychological well-being is crucial for overall health.
• Existing measures can be lengthy, limiting their use in large surveys.
• Ryff's six-dimensional measure is comprehensive but requires a substantial time commitment.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop a concise, 6-item short form of Ryff's psychological well-being measure.
• To validate this ultra-short scale using rigorous psychometric methods.
• To assess its suitability for large-scale studies with limited resources.

Main Methods:

• Utilized the Midlife in the United States dataset.
• Employed an exhaustive search framework to select the optimal 6 items.
• Assessed model fit using RMSEA, CFI, SRMR, factor loadings, and coefficient omega.
• Conducted measurement invariance analyses across demographic groups.

Main Results:

• The 6-item scale demonstrated excellent model fit and strong internal consistency.
• It satisfactorily represented the global psychological well-being construct.
• The scale showed full measurement invariance across gender and race, and partial invariance across age and education.

Conclusions:

• The developed ultra-short scale is a valid and reliable measure of global psychological well-being.
• It is suitable for research settings with time or resource constraints.
• This scale offers a practical alternative for assessing psychological well-being when domain-specific scores are not essential.