EFA and CFA of a new Scale to measure flourish in two Latin American Countries: Argentina and Ecuador

BELÉN MESURADO; RICARDO CRESPO; OMAR RODRIGUEZ

Baltimore

Congreso; 2016 Society for Research on Adolescence Biennial Meeting; 2016

Society for Research on Adolescence

Flourishing, a construct including hedonic and eudaimonic dimensions, is considered by this literature as a richer way of assessing people?s well-being than subjective well-being, commonly known as ?happiness?. In effect, for Ryff and Singer (2008), a eudaimonic perspective includes happiness, personal growth, giving to others and living in accordance with values. Huppert and So(2013) says that flourish is ?a combination of feeling good and functioning effectively? (p. 837)there by Keyes (2002; 2013) suggests that the presence of hedonic symptoms (subjective or emotional well-being) and positive functioning (psychological and social well-being) are required for a person has a flourishing life.The purpose of this study was to develop and provide initial psychometric evaluation of a new scale to measure flourish in two Latin American countries: Argentina and Ecuador base on Keyes?s theoretical proposal. Participants were 256 from Argentina (M = 38.54 years; SD = 9.01) and 193 from Ecuador (M = 33.64 years; SD = 6.36). Procedure to develop the Flourishing Scale.We wrote items to assess the three dimensions of flourish specified Keyes? definition of flourish. This item generation process resulted in an initial pool of 20 items; all items were phrased in a positive direction with the exception of two items. A five-level Likert scale (1 = Strongly Disagree to 5 = Strongly Agree) was used to measure social and emotional dimensions and a five-level semantic differential scale was used to measure emotional dimension (e.g. 1 = Negative to 5 = Positive). Results: Exploratory Factor Analysis and Reliability.The Kaiser?Meyer?Olkin (KMO) statistic was .85 for Argentina and .81 for Ecuador; the Bartlett´s test of sphericity was significant in both countries, (p ≤. 001), indicating that the relation between Flourish items was strong enough to proceed with a factor analysis (Tabachnick&Fidell, 1996). The exploratory factor analysis (EFA) of the 20-item Flourish Scale was conducted using the SPSS software program. Factors were extracted using Maximum Likelihood methods and a Varimax rotation resulting a 3-factor structure with 12 total items, in both countries. Thefirst factor: Social well-being, contains four items that measure individuals´ perception to be engaged with social problem and perceiving social contribution oneself. The second factor, Psychological well-being, contained four items that measure one?s perception of meaning and purpose life, engagement with personal activities (family and work), and general perception of family and work satisfaction. The third factor, Emotional well-being, contained four items that measure positive and negative emotions during the past 2 weeks.The total Flourish scale had an internal consistency of .84 for Argentinean sample and .74 for Ecuadorian sample. Confirmatory Factor Analysis.We tested a three-factor model, with the Psychological well-being, the Social well-being and the Emotional well-being as separate factors.The results indicated the theoretical model fit the data well in both countries (Argentina: χ2 = 114.6, df= 51, p ≤. 001, χ2/ df= 2.25, GFI=.93, CFI=.95, RMR=.05, and RMSEA=.07; and Ecuador: χ2 = 65.03, df = 51, p= 09, χ2/ df= 1.25, GFI = .95, CFI=.98, RMR=.03, and RMSEA=.04).