Dimensions of students ’ psychosocial well-being and their measurement: Validation of a students ’ Psychosocial Well Being Inventory

This paper presents findings from a validation study of a measurement instrument for the dimensions of students’ psychosocial well-being. Researches to date suggest many separate but related dimensions of psychosocial well-being. In the current study, psychosocial well-being is considered to have four dimensions: subjective well-being related to every day’s events, subjective well-being related to faculty events, psychological well-being and social well-being. Diener’s (1985) and Seligman’s (2002) models of subjective well-being and Ryff’s (1995) and Keyes’ (1998) models of psychological and social well-being served as the conceptual basis for the development of this instrument. The sample for the validation study consisted of 449 university students at the Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences, University of Bucharest, Romania. Participants completed seven self-report questionnaires that related to the individual’s positive functioning in personal life and in society, including the Psychosocial Well Being Inventory (PSWBI). The validation study consisted of establishing the psychometric properties, factorial structure of the construct, and convergent and divergent validity of the instrument. Results show that PSWBI is a valid instrument, performing at least as well as popular measures of overall well-being but also specifying its dimensions.

2000; Ross, Cleland, Macleod, 2006;Verger, et al. 2009). But it's also important to know how much satisfaction, happiness and other characteristics of good life students are experiencing in the university environment. To know that the university students are not satisfied, are not feel good about themselves and their social world, has the same importance as knowing that they are stressed or at risk (Haynes, 2002;Cicognani et al., 2008;Sheu Hung-Bin et al., 2009).
The study of well-being has been divided into two streams of research, respectively: the hedonic approach and the eudaimonic approach. The hedonic approach conceptualizes and defines well-being in terms of happiness and of the presence of pleasure and absence of pain and is reflected in the stream of research on subjective well-being (Bradburn, 1969;Diener, 1984;Diener et al., 1984). The eudaimonic approach equates well-being with human potential that, when realized, results in a person's optimal functioning in life (Diener, 1985;Ryan & Deci, 2001b) and is reflected in the stream of research on psychological (Ryff, 1989) and social (Keyes, 1998) well-being.
One goal of researchers who studied well-being was to define the key features of the well-being construct (Kozma et al., 1991;Kafka & Kozma, 2002) and one issue that they have analyzed was the number of dimensions or components that are needed to characterize people's positive evaluations of their lives.
Contemporary literature seems to agree with the idea that well-being is a multidimensional construct encompassing up to three dimensions: subjective, psychological and social; these dimensions are in fact differentiating three forms or levels of overall well-being.
Each of these dimensions is described as multidimensional as well. However, when it comes to the sub-facets of the three principal components of overall well-being, researchers are still engaged in challenging debates.
In a valuable review of the literature on subjective well-being, Diener, Lucas, and Osihi (2005) refer to subjective well-being "as a person's cognitive and affective Europe's Journal of Psychology 87 evaluations of his or her life" (p.63). Despite the lack of agreement about the number of dimensions contained by subjective well-being, two main components are generally recognized: a cognitive (satisfaction) and an affective (pleasant affect, and low levels of unpleasant affect) component (Bradburn, 1969;Andrews and Withey, 1976;Diener, 1984;Diener et al., 1985). Other theorists proposed additional conceptual models for understanding subjective well-being. Martin E. P. Seligman (2000) has distinguished between feelings of meaning, pleasure (including happy emotions), and engagement (interest and "flow") and approached subjective well-being in terms of happiness, identifying the following substructure of happiness: "1. pleasure (or positive emotion); 2. engagement; 3. meaning" (Seligman, Parks, Steen, 2005, p.275). In Csikszentmihalyi's model, subjective wellbeing depends on being involved in interesting activities. Interesting activities are those in which there is an optimal balance between challenge and skill (Csikszentmihalyi, 1975(Csikszentmihalyi, , 1990. Many psychologists who conducted empirical research on well-being based on the eudaimonic approach of the good life, argued that living well is not simply a matter of experiencing more pleasure than pain; instead, it involves a striving for perfection and realization of one's true potential (Ryff, 1989). Ryff and Singer (2005) affirmed that subjective well-being is a fallible indicator of wellness that was not designed to define the basic structure of psychological well-being. Ryff (1989) proposed the concept of psychological well-being as a multidimensional construct that consists of six distinct facets: a) positive attitude toward oneself (selfacceptance); b) satisfying relationships with others (positive relationships with others); c) independence and self-determination (autonomy); d) sense of mastery and competence (environmental mastery); e) sense of goal directedness in life (purpose in life); f) feeling of personal continued development (personal growth).
A more socially-oriented definition of well-being has been proposed by Keyes (1998). In his opinion social well-being captures individuals' appraisals of their own circumstances and functioning in society. Social well-being is considered an important component of overall well-being, in addition to the emotional and psychological types of well-being (Keyes, 2003). Keyes' (1998)  Dimensions of students' psychosocial well-being and their measurement 88 actualization (the evaluation of a society's potential to improve); e) social coherence (the perception of that the social word is well-organized).
The term psychosocial well-being is used nowadays in the literature to refer to a wide range of issues including, but not limited to, mental, emotional, social, physical, economic, cultural, and spiritual health and, consequently, it has been defined in numerous ways. It is agreed that a model of psychosocial well-being should include and reflect the interconnectedness of the various aspects of overall well-being (Linley, et al., 2009).
The multidimensionality of the well-being construct posed many methodological problems when researchers attempted to measure it.
Subjective well-being is most commonly measured by asking people a single question, such as "how satisfied are you with your life as a whole (these days or past month)?". Such question elicits a global evaluation of one's life (Andrews and Whithey, 1976). In contrast to single question measures, multi-item measures of subjective well-being were developed with the purposes to achieving greater reliability. Life satisfaction scales or Affect scales are such multi-items measures of subjective well-being (Diener et al., 1985;Kozma and Stones, 1980;Pavrot and Diener, 1993). Multi-item measures have also been developed for psychological and social well-being. For example, Ryff (1989) created the Scales of Psychological Well-Being and Keyes (1998) created The Social well-being scale. Theses scales include different number of items measuring (on a 5/7-point Likert scale, from 1 = strongly disagree to 5/7 = strongly agree) the dimensions of well-being. These multi-item measures of well-being allowed researchers to examine the factor structure of different forms of overall well-being. According to Kozma et al. (1991), it is important to establish the construct validity of a measure by examining the extent to which the presumed components emerge in studies based on factor analysis. As stated in the literature "…the results obtained from earlier factor-analytic studies (Ryff, 1989;Ryff and Keyes, 1995) are marred by methodological problems. Particular problems include: low internal consistency and test-retest reliability of some scale used for assessing well-being as a multidimensional construct" (Kozma et al., 1991, p.7).
The current study Based on the above mentioned theoretical assumptions and on an integration of Diener's (1985), Seligman's (2002), Ryff's (1995) and Keyes' (1998) models of wellbeing, the Psychosocial Well-Being Inventory (PSWBI) was developed. Its aim is to evaluate psychosocial well-being as a multidimensional construct that includes subjective, psychological and social components (dimensions) as related but distinct aspects of individuals' positive psychological functioning in their environment.
The study reported here describes the validation of this new instrument. The first aim of this study is to therefore establish the psychometric properties of this new instrument.
The second aim of the study is to clarify the relationship between the PSWBI and other measures of well-being such as the Satisfaction with Life Scale/LSI, Subjective Happiness Scale /SH, Subjective Vitality Scale /SV, and Personal Growth Initiative This paper reports only the findings from the validation study (n=449), with necessary references to the pilot study (n=150) conducted before this validation study.
Specifically, the content, construct, criterion, convergent and divergent validity of the PSWBI will be examined along with its reliability. The instruments administered to all participants were self-report, paper and pencil questionnaires and were translated into Romanian and then translated back into English with small language adaptations. Responses to all scales were rated on a Likert scale from 1 = strongly disagree to 5 = strongly agree. Item scores were summed to obtain total scale score. Reliability and validity evidence has been evaluated for each of these instruments. Therefore, in order to evaluate various aspects of students' psychological and social functioning and to compare measures with the PSWBI, the following instruments were used:

Method
Satisfaction with Life Scale (Diener, Emmons, Larsen & Griffin, 1985) was used to assess satisfaction with students' life as a whole. The scale consists of five items (Example: "I am satisfied with my life").
Self-Esteem (Rosenberg) Scale (Rosenberg, 1965) consisting of ten items (5 are reverse scored) was used for measurement of students' positive evaluation of themselves (Example: "On the whole, I am satisfied with myself").
Subjective Happiness Scale (Lyubomirsky and Lepper, 1999) is a four-item scale of global subjective happiness. Two items ask respondents to characterize themselves using both absolute ratings and ratings relative to peers, whereas the other two items offer brief descriptions of happy and unhappy individuals (Example: "In general, I consider myself: from to "not a very happy" to "very happy person").
Subjective Vitality Scale (for individual differences version) (Ryan and Frederick, 1997) with six items, was used for measurement of subjective vitality (that refers to the state of feeling alive and alert, and having energy and is considered an aspect of eudaimonic well-being as being vital and energetic is part of what it means to be fully functioning and psychologically well) (Ryan & Deci, 2001) (Example of items: "I feel alive and vital").
Personal Growth Initiative Scale (Robitschek, 1998) was used for evaluation of the student's active and intentional involvement in changing and developing as a person. It was previously established (Robitschek & Kashubeck, 1999;Whittaker & Robitschek, 2001) that the PGIS is strongly positively related to psychological well- The Attitudes Toward Self Scale (ATS) (Carver et al., 1988) was used to evaluate students' vulnerabilities to depression. ATS was designed to measure three potential self-regulatory vulnerabilities to depression: a) the holding of overly high standards, b) the tendency to be self-critical in case of failure, and c) the tendency to generalize from a single failure to the broader sense of self-worth. Consistently, only generalization was uniquely related to depression (Carver, 1998, Carver et al. 1999 (Example of item for 1) High Standards -"Compared to other people, I expect a lot from myself"; 2) Self-Criticism -"I get unhappy with anything less than what I expected of myself"; 3) Generalization from a single failure to the broader sense of self-worth -"If I notice one fault of mine, it makes me think about my other faults").
Psychosocial Well-Being Inventory was elaborated and developed based on Diener's (1984), Seligman (2002Seligman ( , 2005, Ryff's (1989Ryff's ( , 2005 and Keyes (1998Keyes ( , 2003Keyes ( , 2005) models of subjective, psychological and social well-being. Participants were asked to rate how frequently during the past month they experienced three symptoms of subjective well-being related to everyday events (satisfaction, PSWBI' items were generated from a review of the subjective, psychological and social well-being literature. According to Keyes' procedure (2003)

Descriptive Results
The descriptive analyses of the scores obtained for the scales are reported in Table 1.
The descriptive results of the pilot study were similar. Consequently, the following four subscales of PSWBI can be described: Psychological well being scale (PWB) (8 items) reflects the six dimensions of psychological well-being identified by Ryff (1989)

Reliability Analysis
The four subscales yielded acceptable to excellent internal consistency.
Cronbach's alpha for the overall PSWBI scale and the PSWBI subscales were ranged from .72 to .88 (table 1). As indicated in Table 1, the highest alpha reliability was for the scale of psychological well-being (.84) and the lowest reliability for the subjective well-being related to everyday events scale (.72).

Correlation Analysis
In order to check the construct validity of the PSWBI, correlations between scales were determined. According to the multidimensional model of well-being, the correlation of each scale should be positive.
As we can see in table 3, the Pearson coefficients ranged from low (.31) to moderate (.64) indicating the fact that PSWBI scales measure different but related constructs. Psychological well-being scale was more highly correlated with Subjective well-being related to everyday events than with the Subjective well-being related to the faculty events. Correlation is significant at the 0.01 level (2-tailed).

N= 449
In order to assess the construct and the criterion validity of the PSWBI, measures that comprise similar subscales were included in this study: Satisfaction with Life Scale/LSI, Subjective Happiness Scale /SH, Subjective Vitality Scale /SV, and Personal Growth Initiative Scale/PGI.
Subscales of the PSWBI (Subjective well-being related to everyday events/SWBede, Subjective well-being related to the faculty events/SWBfe. Psychological well-being and Social well-being) and the LSI, SH, SV, and PGI were submitted to bivariate correlational analysis. Correlation is significant at the 0.01 level (2-tailed).
N= 449 As Table 4 shows, all subscales of PSWBI and the other measures were significantly correlated at p = <.001. The Pearson coefficients ranged from low (.23) to moderate (.60) indicating the fact that PSWBI scales shared a moderate positive relationship with the positive functioning in life scales. However, there were discrepancies in correlations of the same domain. For example, the Subjective well-being related to everyday events scale was more highly correlated with the LS, SE, SH, SV, and PGI than the Subjective Well-Being related to faculty events and Psychological Well-Being more highly than Social Well Being. Psychosocial Well-Being scale was more highly correlated with LS, SV and PGI than with SH scales. This suggests that the scales are measuring a similar general construct but they discriminate optimally between domains.
The Attitudes toward Self Scale (ATS) was used for divergent validity analysis of PSWBI.
Two of his scales (indicating the vulnerability to depression) had a negative correlation with PSWBI scales as expected. Principal component analysis yielded three-factor structure of these measures, with positive evaluation's scales (factor 1), well-being scales (factor 2), and vulnerability to depression subscales (factor 3).

Dimensions of students' psychosocial well-being and their measurement
98 Factor 1 comprises (as is shown in These results support previous evidence that well-being is best conceived as a multidimensional phenomenon that includes aspects of both the hedonic and eudaimonic conceptions of well-being (Diener, 1984(Diener, , 2005Ryff, 1989;Keyes, 1998Keyes, , 2003Keyes, , 2005. Studies analysing diverse set of wellness indicators generally reported two factors (one reflecting happiness and another reflecting meaningfulness and personal meaning). These two factors were themselves moderately correlated (King and Napa, 1998). These findings indicate that the hedonic and eudaimonic approaches to good life are distinct but complementary. In the eudaimonic approach, meaningfulness and personal meaning were approached more frequent as far as the individual's self is concerned. The results from present factorial analysis of the scores referring to students' psychosocial well-being pointed out that social experience is added to the personal meaning of the individual, especially in collectivistic cultures (Hall, 1966;Trimbitas et al., 2007;Ciochina, Faria, 2009). As shown, students' perceptions of their social integration and of their social contribution support their psychological well-being and not their social well-being as in Keyes' model of social well-being. These appear to be in line with other findings (Linley, et al., 2009;Roysamb, 2006;Kwan, et al., 1997).
Considering the results of the present study, some weak points (limitations) of this study should be kept in mind before generalizing. One possible limit comes from investigating subjects belonging to a single category of students (psychology students). Second, participants did not complete the questionnaire in a controlled environment and not all participants completed the questionnaire in the same context. Further to this, considering the large age range of students, differences may have been present in regards to their life experience. The results of this study are limited to its particular context given that students' subjective well-being may be affected by several factors related to faculty dimensions themselves, including learning environments, curriculum, and teaching methods. Further, the stability of the PSWBI is unclear as no test-retest analysis was performed. A major drawback of this research is given by the recognized limitations of self-report scales, which rely exclusively on people's cognitive labels of their emotions. Future research should seek to tap alternative sources of information beyond self-report. It is strongly suggested that more research be conducted in this area to gain a comprehensive understanding of the students' well being. The PSWBI should be submitted to further Dimensions of students' psychosocial well-being and their measurement 100 statistical analysis in order to establish it as a stable measure of students' psychosocial well-being.
The main practical implication of the validation of the PSWBI is the fact that it will provide a special-designed measure for the dimensions of well-being among Romanian university students. The instrument supports the idea that the level of wellbeing cannot be measured using only one score; rather, a profile composed of at least four separate scores is required to provide more comprehensive information about individuals' well-being. Data collected with this instrument may help to build student's psychosocial well-being profiles that could highlight the areas in need of improvement in order to promote well-being in the academic environment.