New Well-Being Measures: Short Scales to Assess Flourishing and Positive and Negative Feelings

Author

Ed DIENER, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Derrick WIRTZ, East Carolina University
William TOV, Singapore Management UniversityFollow
Chu KIM-PRIETO, College of New Jersey
Dong-won CHOI, California State University, East Bay
Shigehiro OISHI, University of Virginia
Robert Biswas-DIENER

Publication Type

Journal Article

Version

acceptedVersion

Publication Date

6-2010

Abstract

Measures of well-being were created to assess psychological flourishing and feelings—positive feelings, negative feelings, and the difference between the two. The scales were evaluated in a sample of 689 college students from six locations. The Flourishing Scale is a brief 8-item summary measure of the respondent’s self-perceived success in important areas such as relationships, self-esteem, purpose, and optimism. The scale provides a single psychological well-being score. The measure has good psychometric properties, and is strongly associated with other psychological well-being scales. The Scale of Positive and Negative Experience produces a score for positive feelings (6 items), a score for negative feelings (6 items), and the two can be combined to create a balance score. This 12-item brief scale has a number of desirable features compared to earlier measures of positive and negative emotions. In particular, the scale assesses with a few items a broad range of negative and positive experiences and feelings, not just those of a certain type, and is based on the amount of time the feelings were experienced during the past 4 weeks. The scale converges well with measures of emotions and affective well-being

Keywords

Subjective well-being, Well-being, Measure, Positive affect, Negative affect, Scales (or Assessment)

Discipline

Social Psychology

Research Areas

Psychology

Publication

Social Indicators Research

Volume

97

Issue

2

First Page

143

Last Page

156

ISSN

0303-8300

Identifier

10.1007/s11205-009-9493-y

Publisher

Springer

Citation

DIENER, Ed, WIRTZ, Derrick, TOV, William, KIM-PRIETO, Chu, CHOI, Dong-won, OISHI, Shigehiro, & Biswas-DIENER, Robert.(2010). New Well-Being Measures: Short Scales to Assess Flourishing and Positive and Negative Feelings. Social Indicators Research, 97(2), 143-156.

Available at: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/soss_research/740

Copyright Owner and License

Authors

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.

Additional URL

https://doi.org/10.1007/s11205-009-9493-y