Wisdom assessment: Portuguese adaptation of the Self-Assessed Wisdom Scale – SAWS – by Jeffrey Webster

Abstract

A sabedoria é concebida como a "arte existencial", uma forma de ser que se revela não tanto na exposição teórica, mas sobretudo na capacidade de conduzir a vida da melhor forma. A incidência experimental, relativa ao estudo da sabedoria, intensificou-se nos últimos anos, dado o interesse declarado dos psicólogos cognitivistas e desenvolvimentistas pelos aspetos positivos do desenvolvimento humano.Neste estudo, apresenta-se a versão para a população portuguesa da Self-Assessed Wisdom Scale - SAWS de Jeffrey Webster (2003). A síntese das propriedades psicométricas, apesar de algumas diferenças em relação ao estudo original, aponta para uma estrutura dimensional consistente. Os resultados sugerem a distinção entre as competências envolvidas na identificação das emoções e aquilo que é a vivência, o controlo e a expressão das próprias emoções. A SAWS apresenta qualidades psicométricas que permitem considerá-la como apta para ser utilizada na população portuguesa.

Development and validation of a brief self-assessed wisdom scale

“…First, the shortened version of SAWS can help resolve disputes related to the complicated factor structure and dimensionality of the full version of SAWS. The original scale developer and the subsequent validation studies have generally failed to fully replicate the five latent factor structure of the 40 item scale [2,18,23,33,34]. For example, a recent study showed that some SAWS items did not load on any factor and that the openness dimension had a questionable Cronbach's alpha of 0.68 [18,43,80].…”

“…1 This study also provides empirical evidence to support the factor structure of the BSAWS using CFA. Numerous SAWS related studies have used only EFA to evaluate the factorial validity of the scale, without verifying the construct validity with CFA [2,18,33]. The only SAWS validation study to use CFA was based on five sub-scales, which served as the latent factors for estimating the loadings on the wisdom construct rather than evaluating all 40 items.…”

“…Factor analysis with the principal component estimation method was used to evaluate the dimensionality and factor structure of the BSAWS [2,33,50,57]. The Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin (KMO) and Bartlett's tests of sphericity were used to evaluate the model.…”

“…The above analysis was implemented using IBM SPSS 25.0 and the R (3.6.0) computing software with lavaan package 0.6-3 [79]. Table 2 shows the CFA results for the original SAWS and variations of the factor structure in the literature [2,23,33]. The CFA results based on study 1 (n = 157) suggested that the original full version of SAWS (Model 1) failed to fit the model, with χ 2 (1570.703) / 510 = 3.08, p < 0.001, SRMR = 0.121, CFI = 0.887, TLI = 0.876 and RMSEA = 0.126.…”

“…Controversies have arisen when studies have attempted to adapt the scale to other contexts. P Alves, L Morgado and Bd Oliveira [33] attempted to validate a Portuguese version of the 40-item SAWS, but their EFA results showed that the factor structure was significantly different from that of the original scale. In response, the authors proposed five alternative wisdom domains, namely reflection, mood, emotional self-regulation, experience and open mindedness, which are significantly different from those of the original SAWS.…”