[Theory-guided development and evaluation of a questionnaire concerning mental health]

In our study, the development of a Mental Health Questionnaire is described and this diagnostic instrument, which is based on historically important personality models, evaluated. Our purpose was to develop scales for Personal well-being, Regulatory competence, Self-actualization and Sense-finding ability. The items belonging to these theoretical constructs were analyzed both by a method of expert rating and statistically. A sample of n = 833 was tested (so-called healthy persons, patients with coronary heart disease [CHD], and patients with psychosomatic or neurotic disorders). Three of the mental health (MH) dimensions (except Sense-finding ability) were confirmed by expert rating. As expected, the following differences between the subgroups reached statistical significance: healthy persons had the highest values for MH, followed by CHD patients and psychosomatic/neurotic patients. Per item, CHD patients showed a characteristic pattern of answering. The combination of research methods we used in this study (i.e., theory-guided expert rating, statistical analysis, per item analysis) has provided results that may be important for further development of MH concepts.