Abstract
Background
Mental wellness has traditionally not been tracked by mental health clinicians. The aim is to examine the reliability and validity of the HERO Wellness Scale.
Methods
Eighty-four college students (age ≥18) with and without psychiatric morbidity from a small, private college in the north-central United States enrolled in the WILD 5 Wellness Program—a longitudinal, quasi-experimental clinical trial that included 2 groups (intervention and waitlist). Mental wellness scores at the beginning of the WILD 5 intervention were assessed by the HERO Wellness Scale and the World Health Organization–Five (WHO-5) Well-Being Index.
Results
Internal consistency was calculated from baseline data (N = 84) using Cronbach's alpha for the 5-item HERO composite = .93. The corrected item-total correlations were adequate (>.50), ranging from .67 (resilience) to .86 (mental wellness). The HERO Wellness Scale covers a representative sample of the domain of wellness. It diverges from WHO-5 items by specifically assessing for well-established positive psychology traits such as happiness, enthusiasm, resilience, and optimism.
Conclusions
The HERO Wellness Scale showed good validity and reliability, and should be considered for individual-level assessment of mental wellness. The HERO Wellness Scale adds to the body of knowledge in psychiatry, nursing, and psychology.
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