Measuring Thriving across Nations: Examining the Measurement Equivalence of the Comprehensive Inventory of Thriving (CIT) and the Brief Inventory of Thriving (BIT)

Abstract

Background: Positive psychological health is a multifaceted construct and fundamental to individuals' overall mental health. Yet, measures of positive psychological health tend to focus on only a few of these facets. Su, Tay, and Diener () sought to address this by creating the Comprehensive and Brief Inventories of Thriving (CIT/BIT), integrative measures of well-being that assess positive psychological health broadly.

Method: Given growing interest in cross-national comparisons in positive psychological health, the present study expands on this work by examining the measurement invariance of these two measures across 10 countries (N = 3,077). First, a series of single-group confirmatory analyses were run to assess how well the CIT/BIT fit data from each country. Next, multi-group confirmatory analyses were run to assess measurement invariance.

Results: Single-group confirmatory factor analysis supported the original 18-factor structure of the CIT when compared to alternative models (single factor, seven factor, bi-factor model) in seven of the 10 countries and the single-factor structure of the BIT across all countries. Results from the measurement invariance analysis indicated partial scalar invariance for the remaining seven countries on the CIT as well as partial scalar invariance across all countries for the BIT.

Conclusion: The present study extends the initial work by Su et al. () by providing evidence of the measurement invariance of the comprehensive and brief inventories of thriving across cultures. Although the factor structure of the CIT was inadmissible in three countries, the results provide a crucial first step for those interested in comparing positive psychological health across nations. Research in both using these measures and cross-cultural comparisons on positive psychological health is growing. We hope that the current efforts help facilitate this work towards furthering the understanding of positive psychological health.

Keywords: cross-national; factor analysis; flourishing; measurement equivalence; well-being.