Development and validation of the Winchester Adolescent Wellbeing Scale: a holistic measure of children’s wellbeing

Abstract

ABSTRACT Many existing measures of adolescent wellbeing tend to overlook the perspectives of children and are frequently one-dimensional or designed for specific contexts. We argue that a comprehensive assessment of wellbeing should cover multiple aspects of a child’s wellbeing and that this cannot be done using a single dimension or a limited selection of items. This study aimed to develop and show the initial validation for the Winchester Adolescent Wellbeing Scale (WAWS). We adopted a person-based participatory approach where the inclusion of children’s perspectives was used to define wellbeing and develop the structure of the scale. This ensured children’s voices and experiences were central to the instrument’s creation. The five-factor scale, validated with 422 adolescents aged 11–16, demonstrated robust model fit (RMSEA = 0.07, χ2/d.f. = 2.23, TLI = 0.91, CFI = 0.92) and internal reliability (Cronbach’s alpha exceeding 0.8 across subdimensions). The WAWS has theoretical significance through incorporating adolescents’ perspectives and offering a context-independent and multifaceted wellbeing scale.