Is the mental wellbeing of young Australians best represented by a single, multidimensional or bifactor model?

Validation of the Mental Health Continuum‐Short Form and the dual continua model of well‐being and psychopathology in an adult mental health setting

“…Studies in the general population have shown that the MHC‐SF is a reliable and valid instrument to comprehensively measure emotional, psychological, and social well‐being (De Carvalho et al., ; Hides et al., ; Joshanloo, ; Joshanloo et al., ; Karaś et al., ; Keyes et al., ; Lamers et al., ; Lim, ; Perugini et al., ; Petrillo et al., ; Robitscheck & Keyes, ; Salama‐Younes, & Ismaïl, ). Furthermore, studies in the general population have provided evidence for the dual continua model of well‐being and psychopathology (Gilmour, ; Keyes, ; ; ; Keyes et al., ; Keyes et al., ; Lamers et al., ; Lamers, Westerhof, Bohlmeijer, & Keyes, ; Perugini et al., ; Petrillo et al., ; Renshaw & Cohen, ; Westerhof & Keyes, , ).…”

“…They answered questions like “During the past month, how often did you feel: happy (emotional well‐being); confident to think or express your own ideas and opinions (psychological well‐being); that you had something important to contribute to society (social well‐being). The MHC‐SF has good psychometric qualities in the general population (De Carvalho et al., ; Hides et al., ; Joshanloo, ; Joshanloo, Wissing, Khumalo, & Lamers, ; Karaś et al., ; Keyes et al., ; Lamers et al., ; Lim, ; Perugini et al., ; Petrillo et al., ; Salama‐Younes & Ismaïl, ). The psychometric properties of the MHC‐SF in the psychiatric population will be examined in the present study.…”

Well‐being in Patients with Affective Disorders Compared to Nonclinical Participants: A Multi‐Model Evaluation of the Mental Health Continuum‐Short Form

“…">We examined the construct validity, assessed with CFA and ESEM techniques. Based on previous research, the following six models were evaluated in all three samples: (a) a single factor CFA model with all 14 items; (b) a two correlated factors CFA model with EWB in one factor and both SWB and PWB in a second factor; (c) a three correlated factors CFA model with EWB, SWB, and PWB, as proposed by Keyes (), (); (d) a bifactor CFA model (Schmid & Leiman, ), where each item loads on a specific factor (i.e., EWB, SWB, or PWB) and simultaneously on a general factor (GF), all four factors being orthogonal to each other (de Bruin & du Plessis, ; Hides et al, ; Jovanovic, ); (e) a three‐factor ESEM model (Asparouhov & Muthén, ; Marsh et al, ), where all 14 items are loading on all three correlated factors (i.e., EWB, SWB, and PWB) simultaneously (Joshanloo, ; Joshanloo & Jovanovic, ; Joshanloo & Lamers, ; Joshanloo, Jose, et al, ); (f) a bifactor ESEM model (Morin et al, ), where all 14 items are simultaneously loading on EWB, SWB, PWB, and GF, all four factors being orthogonal to each other (Lamborn, Cramer, & Riberdy, ; Longo, Jovanovic, Sampaio de Carvalho, & Karas, ; Rogoza et al, ; Schutte & Wissing, ). We did not test a higher‐order model (Dore et al, ; Lupano Perugini et al, ; Petrillo et al, ) because for a three first‐order factorial structure, like MHC‐SF, the second‐order is just identified.…”

“…Despite the well‐documented association between psychopathology, especially affective disorders, and well‐being, as assessed with the MHC‐SF, its psychometric properties have been primarily evaluated in general population samples or national epidemiological surveys. In particular, the MHC‐SF has been translated and validated in various countries and cultural contexts (Zemojtel‐Piotrowska et al, ), including Argentina (Lupano Perugini, de la Iglesia, Castro Solano, & Keyes, ), Australia (Hides et al, ), Brazil (Machado & Bandeira, ), Canada (Dore, O'Loughlin, Sabiston, & Fournier, ; Orpana, Vachon, Dykxhoorn, & Jayaraman, ), Chile (Echeverria et al, ), China (Guo et al, ), France (Ismaïl & Salama‐Younes, ), Iran (Joshanloo, ; Joshanloo, Wissing, Khumalo, & Lamers, ), Italy (Joshanloo, Capone, Petrillo, & Caso, ; Petrillo, Capone, Caso, & Keyes, ), the Netherlands (Joshanloo et al, ; Lamers, Westerhof, Bohlmeijer, ten Klooster, & Keyes, ), New Zealand (Joshanloo, Jose, & Kielpikowski, ), Poland (Karas, Cieciuch, & Keyes, ), Portugal (de Carvalho, Pereira, Pinto, & Marôco, ), Serbia (Joshanloo & Jovanovic, ; Jovanovic, ), South Africa (Joshanloo et al, ; Keyes et al, ), South Korea (Lim, ), United States (Joshanloo, ) and Vietnam (Rogoza, Truong Thi, Rozycka‐Tran, Piotrowski, & Zemojtel‐Piotrowska, ), providing an ample body of evidence in support of Keyes's model of well‐being. Although all of these studies were performed in nonclinical samples, they often included several mental illness measures to investigate the discriminant validity of the MHC‐SF.…”

The Value of Exploratory Structural Equation Modeling in Identifying Factor Overlap in the Mental Health Continuum-Short Form (MHC-SF): A Study with a New Zealand Sample

“…Bifactor analysis allows for an examination of the common variance shared by the three well-being factors and the unique variance specific to each of them. To our knowledge, three studies have used bifactor analysis with MHC-SF (i.e., De Bruin and Du Plessis 2015; Hides et al 2016;Jovanović 2015). These studies have shown that a bifactor model fits the data better than a single-factor CFA model (where all the items are specified to load on a single latent factor), and it also fits better than a threefactor CFA model.…”