Evaluation of the validity and reliability of Children’s Worlds Subjective Well-Being Scale (CW-SWBS) in Tehran, Iran

Abstract

IntroductionOne of the basic priorities of any society is to improve the lives of children to have a better childhood and a good chance of living in the future. There are relatively few studies on children's subjective well-being. Subjective well-being includes various factors such as family, school, friends, positive life experiences, etc. The present study was conducted in Tehran with the aim of cultural compatibility and evaluating the validity and reliability of Children’s Worlds Subjective Well-Being Scale (CW-SWBS) in the age group of 7–10 years. MethodTo evaluate the psychometric properties of CW-SWBS, the original scale was translated from English to Persian according to the instructions of the World Health Organization. The content validity of translated scale was determined by 8 experts in the field of children and the face validity was determined by 10 children. Then, to determine the construct validity, Confirmatory Factor Analysis was performed with a sample size of 820. The reliability of the scale was assessed using internal consistency with Cronbach's alpha coefficient and the stability of the scale was assessed by test and re-test using the intra-class correlation coefficient (ICC). ResultsThe mean age of the children participating in the study was 8.8 years. Fifty-three percent of them were girls. The translated tool was validated with 9 subscales (family, children's financial status and assets, relationships with friends and other people, neighborhood, school, child's health status, time and leisure management, general feeling about children's lives and rights) and 73 items. The face validity and content validity of the CW-SWBS were confirmed. The results represented that the fit indices including NFI, AFI, RFI I < CFI more than 0.9 and AGFI, PNFI, SRMR, RMSEA are very suitable. Also, the results are reliable with Cronbach's alpha values of the total scale (α = 0.822) and coefficient (0.834). ConclusionThe Persian version of the multi-factor CW-SWBS is acceptable in terms of psychometric properties and can be used to measure children's subjective well-being in research departments, as well as raising the awareness of social workers, psychologists, counselors and health workers to monitor children's subjective well-being. Measuring different dimensions of children's well-being with a participatory method provides a basis for transmitting their views, experiences, and arguments that in addition to empowering children, an effective and useful operational guide in the social development process and achieving an acceptable level of well-being and health in different aspects of children's lives.