Public Health Agency of Canada, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada.
School of Psychology, University of Ottawa, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada.
Health Promot Chronic Dis Prev Can. 2017 Apr;37(4):123-130. doi: 10.24095/hpcdp.37.4.03.
Positive mental health is increasingly recognized as an important focus for public health policies and programs. In Canada, the Mental Health Continuum-Short Form (MHC-SF) was identified as a promising measure to include on population surveys to measure positive mental health. It proposes to measure a three-factor model of positive mental health including emotional, social and psychological well-being. The purpose of this study was to examine whether the MHC-SF is an adequate measure of positive mental health for Canadian adults.
We conducted confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) using data from the 2012 Canadian Community Health Survey (CCHS)-Mental Health Component (CCHS-MH), and cross-validated the model using data from the CCHS 2011-2012 annual cycle. We examined criterion-related validity through correlations of MHC-SF subscale scores with positively and negatively associated concepts (e.g. life satisfaction and psychological distress, respectively).
We confirmed the validity of the three-factor model of emotional, social and psychological well-being through CFA on two independent samples, once four correlated errors between items on the social well-being scale were added. We observed significant correlations in the anticipated direction between emotional, psychological and social well-being scores and related concepts. Cronbach's alpha for both emotional and psychological well-being subscales was 0.82; for social well-being it was 0.77.
Our study suggests that the MHC-SF measures a three-factor model of positive mental health in the Canadian population. However, caution is warranted when using the social well-being scale, which did not function as well as the other factors, as evidenced by the need to add several correlated error terms to obtain adequate model fit, a higher level of missing data on these questions and weaker correlations with related constructs. Social well-being is important in a comprehensive measure of positive mental health, and further research is recommended.
积极的心理健康越来越被认为是公共卫生政策和计划的一个重要焦点。在加拿大，心理健康连续体-短式量表（MHC-SF）被确定为在人口调查中衡量积极心理健康的一个很有前途的测量方法。它提出要衡量积极心理健康的三因素模型，包括情绪、社会和心理幸福感。本研究的目的是检验 MHC-SF 是否是加拿大成年人积极心理健康的充分衡量标准。
我们使用 2012 年加拿大社区健康调查（CCHS）-心理健康部分（CCHS-MH）的数据进行验证性因素分析（CFA），并使用 CCHS 2011-2012 年年度周期的数据对模型进行交叉验证。我们通过 MHC-SF 子量表得分与正相关和负相关概念（例如，生活满意度和心理困扰）的相关性来检验效标关联效度。
我们通过对两个独立样本进行 CFA，确认了情感、社会和心理幸福感的三因素模型的有效性，同时增加了社会幸福感量表上四个相关项目的误差。我们观察到情感、心理和社会幸福感得分与相关概念之间存在预期方向的显著相关性。情感和心理幸福感子量表的克朗巴赫系数分别为 0.82 和 0.82；社会幸福感量表为 0.77。
我们的研究表明，MHC-SF 在加拿大人群中测量了积极心理健康的三因素模型。然而，在使用社会幸福感量表时需要谨慎，因为它的表现不如其他因素，这表现为需要添加几个相关的误差项才能获得足够的模型拟合度，这些问题的缺失数据水平更高，与相关结构的相关性更弱。社会幸福感在积极心理健康的综合衡量中很重要，建议进一步研究。
