Assessing multiple domains of child well-being: Preliminary development and validation of the multidimensional child wel
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Assessing multiple domains of child well-being: Preliminary development and validation of the multidimensional child well-being scale (MCWBS) Shan Jiang 1
&
Steven Sek-yum Ngai 1
Accepted: 9 September 2020 # Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2020
Abstract The multidimensional nature of child well-being requires valid and reliable tools for assessing children’s multiple developmental outcomes. This study reports the psychometric properties of the Multidimensional Child Well-Being Scale (MCWBS), a 23-item self-report measure developed on the basis of a sample of school-aged children in China (N = 1322; M = 11.8; SD = 1.56). Exploratory factor analysis identified four well-being factors, namely, Physical, Psychological, Social, and Educational. The four-factor structure is further validated by confirmatory factor analysis (CFA). Cronbach’s α for the total scale (α = 0.894) and each subscale (0.857 for physical well-being; 0.917 for psychological well-being; 0.801 for social well-being; and 0.805 for educational well-being) were satisfactory, indicating high reliability. MCWBS positively correlated with quality of life (r = 0.674, p < 0.01) and happiness (r = 0.519, p < 0.01), and negatively correlated with depressive symptoms (r = −0.437, p < 0.01), indicating convergent validity. Multi-group CFA provided support for gender, hukou, and age-related invariance of the MCWBS at the configural, metric, and scalar level. Overall, this study addresses the measurement gap by developing a reliable and valid instrument containing multiple domains of children’s development outcomes, which can contribute to the child well-being research and practice. Keywords Well-being . Children . Multidimensional scale . Psychometric properties . Measurement invariance
Introduction Conceptualization of Child Well-Being Child well-being has recently received widespread attention in policy and research. However, a unified definition of the concept of child well-being is yet to be achieved (Andresen et al., 2019; Dodge et al., 2012) given its different understanding in various social and cultural contexts and academic fields (Camfield et al., 2010; Marjanen et al., 2017). In health science, well-being is often regarded as synonymous to overlapping concepts, such as quality of life (Ben-Arieh et al., 2014; Stratham & Chase, 2010). In philosophy, well-being is generally understood as what is good for an individual from his/her own viewpoint (Ben-Arieh et al., 2014). No unified definition
* Shan Jiang [email protected]; [email protected] 1
Department of Social Work, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shatin, N.T Hong Kong, China
has been acknowledged and the precise concept of child wellbeing remains under debate (Dodge et al., 2012). Despite different opinions and theoretical perspectives on the conceptualization of child well-being, its multidimensionality is at the one consensus reached in academia (Ben-Arieh, 2008a, b, 2014; Jiang & Ngai, 2020; Lansford et al., 2019; Lee, 2014; Moore et al.,
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