Psychometrics of the Psychological Wellbeing and Distress Screener: A Brief Measure of Youth’s Bidimensional Mental Health

Abstract

The present study reports on the psychometric defensibility of the Psychological Wellbeing and Distress Screener (PWDS), which is a 10-item self-report behavior rating scale for measuring youth’s bidimensional (also known as dual-factor or two-continua) mental health. The PWDS was developed using preexisting items within the Health Behavior in School-Aged Children (HBSC) self-report survey, and the present study used the 2009–2010 HBSC sample of U.S. youth in Grades 5 to 10 (N = 12,642). Findings from two phases of data analyses, using random split-half subsamples, identified and confirmed a two-factor latent structure for the PWDS, with one scale measuring psychological wellbeing and the other psychological distress. Results also showed that the wellbeing and distress factors were invariant across grade, race/ethnicity, and residence classifications but not across gender. Implications for future research and potential practice are discussed.

Keywords

bidimensional mental health dual-factor mental health two-continua mental health psychological wellbeing psychological distress schoolwide screening

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Bandalos

D. L.

Finney

S. J.

(2010). Factor analysis: Exploratory and confirmatory. In Hancock

G. R.

Mueller

R. O.

(Eds.), The reviewer’s guide to quantitative methods in the social sciences (pp. 93–114). New York, NY: Routledge.

Dowdy

Twyford

J. M.

Chin

J. K.

DiStefano

C. A.

Kamphaus

R. W.

Mays

K. L.

(2011). Factor structure of the BASC-2 Behavioral and Emotional Screening System student form. Psychological Assessment, 23, 379–387. doi:10.1037/a0021843

Eklund

Dowdy

Jones

Furlong

M. J.

(2011). Applicability of the dual-factor model of mental health for college students. Journal of College Student Psychotherapy, 25, 79–92. doi:10.1080/87568225.2011.532677

Gilman

Huebner

(2003). A review of life satisfaction research with children and adolescents. School Psychology Quarterly, 18, 192–205.

Glover

T. A.

Albers

C. A.

(2007). Considerations for evaluating universal screening assessments. Journal of School Psychology, 45, 117–135. doi:10.1016/j.jsp.2006.05.005

Goodman

Lamping

D. L.

Ploubidis

G. B.

(2010). When to use broader internalising and externalising subscales instead of the hypothesized five subscales of the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ): Data from British parents, teachers and children. Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology, 38, 1179–1191. doi:10.1007/s10802-010-9434-x

Goodman

(2001). Psychometric properties of the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire. Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, 40, 1337–1345. doi:10.1097/00004583-200111000-00015

Greenspoon

P. J.

Sasklofske

D. H.

(2001). Toward an integration of SWB and psychopathology. Social Indicators Research, 54, 81–108. doi:10.1023/A:1007219227883

Iannotti

R. J.

(2013). Health Behavior in School-Aged Children (HBSC), 2009–2010. ICPSR 34792-v1. Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributor]. doi:10.3886/ICPSR34792.v1

10.

Kamphaus

R. W.

Reynolds

C. R.

(2007). BASC-2 Behavioral and Emotional Screening System manual. Circle Pines, MN: Pearson Education.

11.

Kenny

D. A.

(2014). Measuring model fit in structural equation modeling. Retrieved from www.davidakenny.net/cm/fit.htm

12.

Keyes

C. L. M.

(2007). Promoting and protecting mental health as flourishing: A complimentary strategy for improving national mental health. American Psychologist, 62, 95–108. doi:10.1037/0003-066X.62.2.95

13.

Nansel

T. R.

Overpeck

Ramani

S. P.

Ruan

W. J.

Simons-Morton

Scheidt

(2001). Bullying behaviors among US youth: Prevalence and association with psychosocial adjustment. Journal of the American Medical Association, 285, 2094–2100. doi:10.1001/jama.285.16.2094

14.

Renshaw

T. L.

Cohen

A. S.

(2014). Life satisfaction as a distinguishing indicator of college student functioning: Further validation of the two-continua model of mental health. Social Indicators Research, 117, 319–334. doi:10.1007/s11205-013-0342-7

15.

Renshaw

T. L.

Eklund

Bolognino

S. J.

Adodo

(2016). Bidimensional emotional health in college students: A comparison of categorical and continuous analytic approaches. Journal of Psychopathology and Behavioral Assessment. Advance online publication. doi:10.1007/s10862-016-9558-6

16.

Schlomer

G. L.

Bauman

Card

N. A.

(2010). Best practices for missing data management in counseling psychology. Journal of Counseling Psychology, 57, 1−10. doi:10.1037/a0018082

17.

Suldo

S. M.

Shaffer

E. J.

(2008). Looking beyond psychopathology: The dual-factor model of mental health in youth. School Psychology Review, 37, 52–68.

18.

Suldo

S. M.

Thalji

Ferron

(2011). Longitudinal academic outcomes predicted by early adolescents’ subjective well-being, psychopathology, and mental health status yielded from a dual-factor model. The Journal of Positive Psychology, 6, 17–30. doi:10.1080/17439760.2010.536774

19.

Vandenberg

R. J.

Lance

C. E.

(2002). A review and synthesis of the measurement invariance literature: Suggestions, practices, and recommendations for organizational research. Organizational Research Methods, 3, 4–70. doi:10.1177/109442810031002

20.

World Health Organization (2014). Health behavior in school-aged children: World Health Organization collaborative cross-national survey. Retrieved from www.hbsc.org.