Psychological Well-Being Scale for Children

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Abstract

The psychological well-being Scale for Children (PWB-c) is a specialized psychometric instrument designed to capture eudaimonic well-being in pre-adolescents aged 8 to 12 years. While the measurement of adult well-being has long distinguished between hedonic (feeling good) and eudaimonic (functioning well) paradigms, research on Children has historically lacked robust tools to assess the latter. To bridge this gap, the PWB-c was developed as an age-appropriate adaptation of Carol Ryff’s widely used psychological well-being scale, translating complex philosophical concepts into accessible, everyday experiences relevant to childhood development.

The development of this scale represents a significant advancement in pediatric and developmental psychometrics. By providing a reliable self-report measure, the PWB-c empowers researchers to evaluate Children's well-being directly from their own perspectives, rather than relying on parent or teacher proxies. The instrument is available in 24-item, 12-item, and 6-item configurations, though the longer two versions are recommended for optimal psychometric performance. This flexibility makes it highly valuable for both comprehensive developmental studies and time-constrained clinical or educational assessments.

Ultimately, the PWB-c facilitates a more holistic understanding of child flourishing. It allows investigators to explore the nuanced relationships between subjective happiness and deeper psychological growth, track developmental trajectories across middle childhood, and rigorously evaluate the efficacy of Positive Psychology interventions designed to help Children thrive in their environments.

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Keywords
psychological well-being
eudaimonic well-being
child development
Scale validation
psychometrics
Ryff's PWB
Positive Psychology

📊 Psychometric Scorecard

Items Count
24
Structure
Multidimensional
Fit Index (CFI)
0.920
Validation Country
📍 Netherlands

Authors

👤 Suzanna J. Opree
✉ [email protected]
🏛 Erasmus School of History, Culture and Communication ESHCC, Erasmus University Rotterdam

👤 Moniek Buijzen
✉ [email protected]
🏛 Behavioural Science Institute BSI, Radboud University

👤 Eva A. van Reijmersdal
✉ [email protected]
🏛 Amsterdam School of Communication Research ASCoR, University of Amsterdam

Purpose

Historically, the measurement of child well-being has been heavily skewed toward hedonic indicators—such as momentary happiness or life satisfaction—or relied exclusively on proxy reports from parents and teachers. While subjective well-being scales for youth are plentiful, tools measuring eudaimonic well-being (the realization of potential and cultivation of strengths) have been notably absent. The PWB-c was explicitly developed to fill this methodological void, providing a validated, child-centric measure that captures the deeper, more enduring aspects of psychological flourishing.

For researchers and clinicians, the availability of the PWB-c is transformative. It enables the joint study of hedonic and eudaimonic paradigms in youth, allowing professionals to map how feeling happy interacts with functioning well during critical developmental windows. Furthermore, it provides a vital outcome measure for educational and therapeutic interventions aimed at fostering resilience, autonomy, and positive relationships in middle childhood, ensuring that such programs can be evaluated using developmentally appropriate, evidence-based metrics.

Construct

Rooted in the eudaimonic tradition of Positive Psychology, the PWB-c operationalizes well-being as the realization of one's potential and the cultivation of personal strengths. The instrument adapts Carol Ryff’s seminal six-factor model of psychological well-being for a younger demographic. These six dimensions include Environmental Mastery, Personal Growth, Purpose in Life, Self-Acceptance, Autonomy, and Positive Relations with Others. Because the original adult concepts are highly abstract, the PWB-c translates them into developmentally appropriate manifestations.

For example, while adult 'environmental mastery' might involve managing complex life responsibilities, the child equivalent focuses on making daily choices about playdates or time use. Similarly, 'purpose in life' is operationalized through a child's natural tendency to daydream about their future, and 'autonomy' is measured by their capacity to make independent choices or actively seek parental guidance when appropriate. By mapping these sophisticated psychological constructs onto the everyday cognitive and social realities of 8- to 12-year-olds, the PWB-c maintains theoretical fidelity to Ryff's model while ensuring high ecological validity for Children.

Validity

The validation process for the PWB-c incorporated multiple methodological phases to ensure robust psychometric properties. Initially, content validity was established through expert review and cognitive interviewing via focus groups with target-aged Children. This crucial step ensured that the vocabulary was accessible, negations were minimized, and the conceptual examples resonated with the lived experiences of 8- to 12-year-olds, mitigating the risk of construct-irrelevant variance due to reading comprehension issues.

Construct validity was further evaluated by examining the scale's nomological network, specifically its relationship with established measures of subjective well-being (based on Huebner's work). The researchers hypothesized and confirmed that eudaimonic psychological well-being would correlate positively with hedonic life satisfaction, mirroring the synergistic patterns typically observed in adult literature. The successful replication of these theoretical relationships across both a pilot sample and a large-scale main study provides strong evidence that the PWB-c accurately captures the intended psychological constructs.

Convergent & Discriminant Validation Correlations

Reference Instrument Correlation Coefficient (r)
Subjective Well-Being Scale (adapted from Huebner)

Reliability

Reliability testing for the PWB-c focused on both internal consistency and temporal stability, ensuring the instrument produces dependable scores across items and over time. The researchers established rigorous a priori thresholds, requiring Cronbach's alpha coefficients to exceed 0.70 for adequate internal consistency and Pearson's correlation coefficients to exceed 0.50 for test-retest reliability.

To assess temporal stability, the scale was administered twice over a two-week interval during the pilot phase. The results demonstrated that the 24-item and 12-item configurations of the scale consistently met or exceeded these psychometric benchmarks across the overall scale and its respective sub-dimensions. Consequently, the authors strongly recommend utilizing the 24- or 12-item versions for empirical research, as they provide the optimal balance of comprehensive measurement and statistical reliability.

Factor Analysis

To evaluate the structural validity of the PWB-c, researchers employed Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) using maximum likelihood estimation. They tested a second-order structural model where psychological well-being served as the overarching construct, underpinned by the six distinct first-order dimensions proposed by Ryff. The initial theoretical model, which included a pool of 37 items, demonstrated inadequate fit to the data (CFI = 0.66, RMSEA = 0.06), indicating that not all adapted items functioned optimally together.

To achieve a psychometrically sound instrument, the researchers engaged in systematic model trimming. They removed items with non-significant or weak factor loadings (below 0.35) and accounted for shared measurement error among similarly worded items based on modification indices. These iterative refinements dramatically improved the model fit, ultimately yielding a CFI of 0.92 and an RMSEA of 0.05. This structural refinement process resulted in the creation of the optimized 24-item, 12-item, and 6-item versions, confirming that the six-factor theoretical structure of psychological well-being is indeed applicable to Children when measured with appropriately calibrated items.

Subscales

Subscale Items Description
Environmental Mastery Measures the child's competence in managing their everyday environment and making daily choices regarding time use and activities.
Personal Growth Assesses the child's openness to new experiences, inquisitiveness, and desire for continued personal development.
Purpose in Life Evaluates the child's sense of directedness, often captured through their tendency to daydream and contemplate future goals or professions.
Self-Acceptance Measures the extent to which the child holds a positive attitude toward themselves and feels proud or happy about who they are.
Autonomy Assesses the child's ability and desire to make independent decisions, as well as their capacity to actively seek guidance when needed.
Positive Relations with Others Evaluates the quality, warmth, and trust present in the child's relationships with both parents and peers.

Instrument

Test Type Self-report questionnaire
Format 24, 12, or 6 items
Scoring Item scores are aggregated to form subscale and total psychological well-being scores
Language Dutch
Population Children
Age Group 8-12 years
Administration Paper-and-pencil

Psychological Well-Being Scale for Children Items

📋 Items are currently not available

The individual items of this scale are not publicly available. Researchers interested in using this instrument should contact the original authors directly to request the scale materials.

Sample

The pilot study consisted of 157 Children (54.8% girls; mean age = 9.93 years) recruited from 7th grade classrooms across five schools in the Netherlands. The main validation study utilized a larger sample of 1,877 Children.

Permissions & Test Year

Published under an open access Creative Commons license (CC BY 4.0) by MDPI.

Test Year: 2018

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Cite This Paper

Suzanna J. Opree, Moniek Buijzen, Eva A. van Reijmersdal (2018). psychological well-being Scale for Children. Societies. https://doi.org/10.3390/soc8010018

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Cite this article

Mohammed looti (2026). Psychological Well-Being Scale for Children. PSYCHOLOGICAL SCALES. Retrieved from https://scales.arabpsychology.com/s/psychological-well-being-scale-for-children/

Mohammed looti. "Psychological Well-Being Scale for Children." PSYCHOLOGICAL SCALES, 14 Aug. 2026, https://scales.arabpsychology.com/s/psychological-well-being-scale-for-children/.

Mohammed looti. "Psychological Well-Being Scale for Children." PSYCHOLOGICAL SCALES, 2026. https://scales.arabpsychology.com/s/psychological-well-being-scale-for-children/.

Mohammed looti (2026) 'Psychological Well-Being Scale for Children', PSYCHOLOGICAL SCALES. Available at: https://scales.arabpsychology.com/s/psychological-well-being-scale-for-children/.

[1] Mohammed looti, "Psychological Well-Being Scale for Children," PSYCHOLOGICAL SCALES, vol. X, no. Y, ص Z-Z, August, 2026.

Mohammed looti. Psychological Well-Being Scale for Children. PSYCHOLOGICAL SCALES. 2026;vol(issue):pages.

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