Validation of Well-being Models on North Indian Adolescents

Well-being is defined diversely such as optimal psychological experience and functioning (Deci & Ryan, 2008), happiness (Salama-Younes, 2011), satisfaction (Campbell, Converse, & Rodgers, 1976) etc. The current study validated two well-being scales (The Warwick – Edinburgh Mental Well-being Scale – WEMWBS; Tennant et al 2007 & PERMA, Kern, et al., 2014) in Hindi and English languages and explored the effect of socio-demographic variables on adolescents’ well-being from four North Indian states. Convergent validity was established with The Child and Youth Resilience Measure - 28 (Ungar & Leibenberg, 2009). A total of 1294 (Females = 640, Males = 654) adolescents in age range of 12-19 years (Mean= 15.27 years; SD=1.08) voluntarily participated in the study; Delhi (N=355; Females=167, Males=188), Haryana (N=297; Females=148, Males=149), Uttar Pradesh (N=297; Females=159, Males=138) and Rajasthan (N=345; Females=166, Males=179). Results indicated that the PERMA model did not confirm to the original model, hence EFA was employed on 1/3^rd of the participants. The results of EFA indicated a four factor solution with forty one items and 56.83% of variance. Further CFA was employed to assess the construct validity which was confirmed for both the well-being scales. A multi-group CFA for languages was computed to establish the configural invariance, which indicated that construct validity was same for both the languages. Results of convergent validity demonstrated that WEMWBS and PERMA and its dimensions positively correlated with dimensions of CYRM. Multivariate analysis revealed that females possessed higher scores on well-being as compared to males; private school adolescents possessed better well-being scores as compared to their counterparts and those residing in urban areas possessed better well-being scores as compared to those staying in rural areas. The state-wise post hoc test indicated that for both the well-being scales scores were significantly higher in Haryanvi adolescents as compared to adolescents from other states. Rajasthan adolescents possessed the least well-being scores across all four states. These results highlight the not only the cultural diversity and its effect on well-being but also need to adapted and validated before drawing conclusions.