The Positivity Scale: Concurrent and Factorial Validity Across Late Childhood and Early Adolescence.

Antonio Zuffianò,Jana Kvapilová,Flavia Cirimele,Gian Vittorio Caprara,Belén López-Pérez

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2019.00831

Antonio Zuffianò, Jana Kvapilová + Show 3 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.00831

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Abstract

Despite the well-established protective functions of positivity (i.e., a dispositional self-evaluative tendency to view oneself, life, and future under a positive outlook) from middle adolescence to old age, its reliable assessment and contribution to a proper psychological functioning have received little attention during previous developmental phases. In this article, we aimed to evaluate the psychometric properties and construct validity of the eight-item Positivity Scale (P Scale; Caprara et al., 2012) during late childhood and early adolescence in a sample of British students (N = 742; 48% boys) from both primary (Mage = 10.75, SD = 0.52) and secondary schools (Mage = 13.38 years, SD = 0.94). First, results from confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) attested to the plausibility of the hypothesized 1-factor structure of the P Scale in a revised CFA model including the correlation between the residuals of two items similar in their wording. Next, we found evidence for strong (scalar) measurement invariance of the P Scale across late childhood and early adolescence as well as for its concurrent validity as indicated by expected relations of positivity to indicators of adjustment (i.e., prosocial behavior) and maladjustment (i.e., externalizing and internalizing problems). Overall, these findings support the concurrent and factorial validity of the P Scale as a short self-report instrument to measure children’s tendency to view their experience from a positive stance. We discuss the implications of our results for improving the wording of the items composing P Scale as well as for understanding the dispositional mechanisms conducive to psychological health and wellbeing across late childhood and early adolescence.

Highlights

Given the alarming rates of mental health problems among youth (Kieling et al, 2011), psychologists have devoted their effort to identify those individual characteristics that may sustain people’s wellbeing
The Positivity Scale (P Scale) has been used in several studies that attested to the positive relations between POS and important outcomes, such as physical health and hedonic balance (Caprara et al, 2010b), quality of relationship styles (Castellani et al, 2016), positive affect (Caprara G.V. et al, 2017), prosociality (Luengo Kanacri et al, 2017), resilience (Milioni et al, 2016), and healthy functioning in old age (Caprara M. et al, 2017)
We argue about the relevance of assessing the validity of the P Scale across late childhood and early adolescence as, during these developmental phases, children and adolescents likely experience identity development shifts (Kroger, 2007) and physical changes, which jointly contribute to create a period of “storm and stress” (Hollenstein and Lougheed, 2013)

Summary

Introduction

Given the alarming rates of mental health problems among youth (Kieling et al, 2011), psychologists have devoted their effort to identify those individual characteristics that may sustain people’s wellbeing. Despite the considerable amount of empirical evidence concerning the key role of POS from middle adolescence (Luengo Kanacri et al, 2017) to old age (Caprara M. et al, 2017), the extent to which POS could represent a protective dispositional factor during childhood and early adolescence remains partly unexplored (see Tian et al, 2018). This is relatively surprising, since the onset of mental health problems during adulthood often occur before the age of 14 years (World Health Organization [WHO], 2013).

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