Measures of psychological well-being
[Page under construction. Draft only: 6 November 2012]
This page will list scales to measure psychological well-being, tried and tested in the field on general populations. Scales tested on students will not be listed, unless thay have also been used on general populations.
Himmelweit & Turner (1982)
Social and Psychological Antecedents of Depression: A Longitudinal Study from Adolescence to Early Adulthood of a Non-clinical Population.
Life-Span Development and Behaviour, Vol 4, 316-344, Academic Press 1982
Watson, D., Clark, L. A., & Tellegan, A. (1988).
Development and validation of brief measures of positive and
negative affect: The PANAS scales.
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 54(6), 1063–1070.
(PANAS; Watson et al., 1988)
Worksheet 3.1 The Positive and Negative Affect Schedule (PANAS;
John R. Crawford* and Julie D. Henry
The Positive and Negative Affect Schedule (PANAS):
Construct validity, measurement properties and normative data in a large non-clinical sample
David Watson and Lee Anna Clark
THE PANAS-X Manual for the Positive and Negative Affect Schedule - Expanded Form
Ed Diener
The Satisfaction with Life Scale
William Pavot and Ed Diener
Review of the Satisfaction with Life scale
Psychological Assessment, 1993, Vol , No 2, 164-172
Tennant R, Joseph S, Stewart-Brown S. (2007)
The Affectometer 2: a measure of positive mental health in UK populations
Qual Life Res. 2007 May;16(4):687-95. Epub 2007 Feb 1.
Bond L, Kearns A, Mason P, Tannahill C, Egan M, Whitely E.
Exploring the relationships between housing, neighbourhoods and mental wellbeing for residents of deprived areas.
BMC Public Health 2012;12:48.
Duane F Alwin
Feeling Thermometers Versus 7-point Scales
Sociological Methods and Research, 25, 3, 1997
There’s a particularly interesting article The Warwick-Edinburgh Mental Well-being Scale (WEMWBS):
development and UK validation which lists that and other scales used in the measurement of
mental health. This scale has recently been used in Scotland (details on Measuring Mental Well-being). To date I have not found a single site listing the contents of all the different scales together with their statistical properties, and certainly none with any operational or critical assessments. Part of the problem is that academics and others tend not (or do not have time) to read outside their own narrow specialisms, so there is overlapping of work in mental health, clinical and social psychology, sociology, political science, econometrics etc which never seems to be compared or co-ordinated. In any case, the questionnaires I developed with Mark Abrams in the early 1970s anticipate most of this stuff by 40 years or so, albeit with much smaller samples. Some of our items were taken from even earlier work by Allister Macmillan, initiator of the so-called Stirling County Studies, who conducted the first general population survey to have simultaneous psychiatric assessments in a mobile clinic.
Allister M Macmillan
The Health Opinion Survey: Technique for estimating prevalence of psychoneurotic and related types of disorder in communities
(Monograph Supplement 7, Psychological Reports, 1957, 3, 325-339, Southern Universities Press)
This page will list scales to measure psychological well-being, tried and tested in the field on general populations. Scales tested on students will not be listed, unless thay have also been used on general populations.
Himmelweit & Turner (1982)
Social and Psychological Antecedents of Depression: A Longitudinal Study from Adolescence to Early Adulthood of a Non-clinical Population.
Life-Span Development and Behaviour, Vol 4, 316-344, Academic Press 1982
Watson, D., Clark, L. A., & Tellegan, A. (1988).
Development and validation of brief measures of positive and
negative affect: The PANAS scales.
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 54(6), 1063–1070.
(PANAS; Watson et al., 1988)
Worksheet 3.1 The Positive and Negative Affect Schedule (PANAS;
John R. Crawford* and Julie D. Henry
The Positive and Negative Affect Schedule (PANAS):
Construct validity, measurement properties and normative data in a large non-clinical sample
David Watson and Lee Anna Clark
THE PANAS-X Manual for the Positive and Negative Affect Schedule - Expanded Form
Ed Diener
The Satisfaction with Life Scale
William Pavot and Ed Diener
Review of the Satisfaction with Life scale
Psychological Assessment, 1993, Vol , No 2, 164-172
Tennant R, Joseph S, Stewart-Brown S. (2007)
The Affectometer 2: a measure of positive mental health in UK populations
Qual Life Res. 2007 May;16(4):687-95. Epub 2007 Feb 1.
Bond L, Kearns A, Mason P, Tannahill C, Egan M, Whitely E.
Exploring the relationships between housing, neighbourhoods and mental wellbeing for residents of deprived areas.
BMC Public Health 2012;12:48.
Duane F Alwin
Feeling Thermometers Versus 7-point Scales
Sociological Methods and Research, 25, 3, 1997
There’s a particularly interesting article The Warwick-Edinburgh Mental Well-being Scale (WEMWBS):
development and UK validation which lists that and other scales used in the measurement of
mental health. This scale has recently been used in Scotland (details on Measuring Mental Well-being). To date I have not found a single site listing the contents of all the different scales together with their statistical properties, and certainly none with any operational or critical assessments. Part of the problem is that academics and others tend not (or do not have time) to read outside their own narrow specialisms, so there is overlapping of work in mental health, clinical and social psychology, sociology, political science, econometrics etc which never seems to be compared or co-ordinated. In any case, the questionnaires I developed with Mark Abrams in the early 1970s anticipate most of this stuff by 40 years or so, albeit with much smaller samples. Some of our items were taken from even earlier work by Allister Macmillan, initiator of the so-called Stirling County Studies, who conducted the first general population survey to have simultaneous psychiatric assessments in a mobile clinic.
Allister M Macmillan
The Health Opinion Survey: Technique for estimating prevalence of psychoneurotic and related types of disorder in communities
(Monograph Supplement 7, Psychological Reports, 1957, 3, 325-339, Southern Universities Press)