Momentary PERMA: An Adapted Measurement Tool for Studying Well-Being in Daily Life

Abstract

PERMA is a multidimensional framework that explains well-being through five hedonic and eudaimonic psychological elements–Positive emotions, Engagement, Relationships, Meaning, Accomplishment. Soon after the PERMA framework was proposed, PERMA-Profiler was introduced as a validated assessment tool for measuring these five elements of well-being from a global perspective. The current study aimed to shed further light onto the measurement of PERMA elements, extending it beyond global evaluations, to daily life assessments and the examination of individual differences in their dynamic characteristics. We introduce mPERMA (momentary PERMA), as an EMA-adapted version of the PERMA-Profiler measure, to assess well-being in daily life. Using data collected in an Ecological Momentary Assessment (EMA) study (N = 160), we first demonstrate the factor structure of mPERMA through a multilevel factor analysis and next examine within-person means and the dynamics of change (e.g., intra-individual variability) in the PERMA elements. Findings revealed that mPERMA displays convergent validity with two global measures of hedonic and eudaimonic well-being, namely Flourishing and Subjective Well-Being. Moreover, dynamical characteristics of the five elements of well-being measured over time, map onto their corresponding hedonic or eudaimonic global measures of well-being. Results of this paper present how dynamical features of well-being in daily life provide novel insights into predicting global well-being.