Developing a Brief Version of Ryff’s Scale to Assess the Psychological Well-Being of Adolescents in Hong Kong

Abstract. Ryff’s Psychological Well-Being Scale (PWBS) has provided a useful measure for investigating the eudaimonic well-being of adults and elderly people from the positive psychology perspective. However, its length and structure, and its applicability to younger populations have raised important concerns in the assessment with Chinese adolescents. Although different shortened versions of PWBS in various languages have been developed, they were mostly not adapted for use with adolescents and did not have satisfactory model fit and internal consistencies. This investigation aimed to develop a brief Chinese PWBS version to assess the eudaimonic well-being of adolescents in Hong Kong. Two studies related to scale development and validation involving three samples of 1,433 adolescents from Hong Kong were reported. Item selection, construct validation, model testing, and rewording of items to suit adolescent use were guided by exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses as well as correlations with external scales assessing similar PWBS content dimensions. The resulting 24-item Chinese PWBS includes only positively keyed items in simple language suitable for adolescent use. Validation and cross-validation results have demonstrated that it is a brief, valid, and reliable scale for assessing adolescent psychological well-being in six dimensions in the Chinese context.