Dominance of General Versus Specific Aspects of Wellbeing on the Student Subjective Wellbeing Questionnaire

The Student Subjective Wellbeing Questionnaire (SSWQ) is a 16-item measure of school-specific subjective wellbeing intended for mental health screening applications. We extended past validation work to scrutinize the SSWQ's previously proposed factor structure (i.e., four group factors; one general factor) and score reliability using two random subsets of data from a sample of 1,020 adolescents in grades 9-12. Results from exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses suggested that the four items related to the educational purpose [EP] group factor did not cohere as expected, unlike the items for the other three-group factors. Revised 12-item models that excluded the EP items were defensible across both subsamples. Model-based reliability indices for the 12-item general factor scores were consistently strong and showed exceptionally high correlation with the original 16-item version (r = .98), yet unique reliability of the group factor scores was comparatively weaker. We recommend future research reevaluate the SSWQ item content and factor structure and consider using model-based factor scores at least in addition to sum scores for analyses when operating in a latent factor framework. We emphasize relying on the general rather than the group factor scores to parse individual differences in student subjective wellbeing or to make critical decisions regarding intervention resource allocation. Impact and Implications We found that youth-reported subjective wellbeing specifically related to school could be measured with fewer questions than it has previously. Although this measure gives information about different kinds of school wellbeing, we recommend that professionals stick to only looking at the general total score if making important choices about student mental health as it is the strongest indicator overall and simplifies decision-making.