Validated measure of Ryff psychological well-being among students of Qazvin University of Medical Sciences (2009)

Abstract

Background: Well-being means the harmony in all dimensions of an individual. Dimensions of psychological well-being include independence, environmental mastery, personal growth, positive relationship, purposeful life, and self-acceptance. Objective: The present study was aimed to determine the factor structure of the three-question version of the Ryff psychological well-being scale . Methods: This was a cross-sectional study in which 330 students of Qazvin University of Medical Sciences were selected based on a multistage random sampling. The participants responded to questions of the short version of Ryff psychological well-being scale. Data were analyzed by descriptive statistics and factor analysis. Findings : Factor analysis showed that the multidimensional model of psychological well-being scale in its three-question version acceptably fitted with the data. Also, the factor analysis of this scale yielded four factors while two questions were deleted due to absence of load on any factor . Conclusion: The results obtained in this study were different from that of six-dimension model and only four factors extracted. However, due to presence of appropriate reliability, this scale could be a suitable tool to measure the psychological well-being among students .