The Measurement of Psychological Well-Being

This chapter attempts to develop measures of psychological well-being for use in the general population and focuses on the state of art at the present time. Physical symptoms, psychological symptoms of anxiety and indictors of self-esteem continued, however, to be important indicators of mental health. The negative affect cluster was related to items reflecting psychosomatic symptoms, anxiety, poor role adjustment and worries--all traditional indicators of poor mental health. The chapter reviews the development of measures of psychological well-being from the beginnings during the Second World War down to the current efforts at National Center for Health Statistics to establish a measure of general usefulness as part of our national health statistical programs. It argues that similar attempts are underway in other countries, notably in the Canadian Health Survey. The problem is analogous to that in intelligence testing where there has been long debate about a single general factor of intelligence versus several specific factors.