Development and validation of the Winchester Adolescent Wellbeing Scale: a holistic measure of children’s wellbeing

Figures & data

Table 1. Themes identified in Gennings et al. (Gennings et al., 2021) that were translated into subdimensions for the WAWS.

Overarching Themes	First order themes	Identified by	Retained for WAWS	Justification for removal or retention
Positive feelings	Flourishing	E	✔	Flourishing was retained as it seemed central to expert’s descriptions of wellbeing. The term also captured the meaning of children’s discussions within focus groups. This theme had some overlaps with the ‘determination’ theme identified by children.
	Health	B	✔	This theme was central to discussions in all interviews/focus groups where participants discussed both mental and physical health. The potential splitting of health into mental and physical sub-dimensions for the scale was discussed.
	Determination	A	✔	Determination was identified during focus groups. Discussions had some overlap with expert’s descriptions of flourishing. It was agreed to keep determination and flourishing as separate dimensions for the initial analyses although they shared similar properties.
External Influences	Connections	E	✔	This theme was identified in the expert interviews where experts broadly discussed connections in relation to friends and family.
	Basic needs	E	✘	This theme was only identified as important by the expert sample and findings highlighted that children might not comprehend the link between basic needs and wellbeing. Therefore, it was not retained for the scale development.
	Social interactions	A	✔	Adolescents highlighted a difference in feeling connected to family and feeling socially connected.
	Upbringing & parental dependence	A	✔	Specifically, family was identified by children as being important for their wellbeing.
	Fitting in & judgement	A	✔	This theme was identified by adolescents, where belonging seemed particularly important to their perception of wellbeing.
	Material goods	A	✘	This theme related to adolescents not viewing material goods as important for their wellbeing. Based on children’s communication that this was not important for their wellbeing, this theme was not included as a subdimension.

Abbreviations: Expert (E); Adolescent (A); Both expert and adolescent (B).

Table 2. Initial subdimension definitions.

Sub-dimensions	Definitions	Similar dimensions/items in existing wellbeing measures
Health	Perceptions of feeling well within one’s self	General health – Psychological General Wellbeing Index (Grossi & Compare, 2014) Health – Child and Youth Well-Being Index in the United States (Land et al., 2001) Health – Personal Well-being Index: School Children (Cummins & Lau, 2005) Positive emotional state – The Stirling Children’s Wellbeing Scale (Liddle & Carter, 2015) ‘I feel active and vigorous’, WHO-5 Wellbeing Index (World Health Organization, 1998)
Flourishing	Perceptions of accomplishment from achieving goals	Engagement – PERMA-Profiler (Butler & Kern, 2016) ‘My daily life has been filled with things that interest me’ – WHO-5 Wellbeing Index (World Health Organization, 1998) ‘I’ve been feeling optimistic about the future’ & ‘I’ve been interested in new things’ – WEMWBS (Clarke et al., 2011)
Determination	Perceptions of drive to achieve personal goals	Achievement – Personal Well-being Index: School Children (Cummins & Lau, 2005) Self – Youth Empowerment Scale – Mental Health (Walker et al., 2010) Sense of mastery – Resilience Scale for Adolescents (Goldstein, 2008) Accomplishments – PERMA-Profiler (Butler & Kern, 2016)
Judgement*	Perceptions of being viewed negatively by others	Community connectedness – Child and Youth Well-Being Index in the United States (Land et al., 2001) Community – Personal Well-being Index: School Children (Cummins & Lau, 2005) ‘I’ve been feeling good about myself’ & ‘I’ve been feeling close to other people’ – WEMWBS (Clarke et al., 2011) ‘I think lots of people care for me’ – Stirling Children’s Well-being Scale (Liddle & Carter, 2015)
Family*	Perceptions of comfort afforded by parents/carers	Family – Multidimensional Students Life Satisfaction Scale (Huebner, 1991). Children’s relationships – An index of child well-being in the European Union (Bradshaw et al., 2007)
Friends*	Perceptions of feeling connected to others	Social relationships – Child and Youth Well-Being Index in the United States (Land et al., 2001) Children’s relationships – An index of child well-being in the European Union (Bradshaw et al., 2007) Relationships – Personal Well-being Index: School Children (Cummins & Lau, 2005) Friends – Multidimensional Students Life Satisfaction Scale (Huebner, 1991) Relationships – PERMA-Profiler (Butler & Kern, 2016) ‘I’ve been feeling interested in other people’ –WEMWBS (Clarke et al., 2011)

*To enhance the clarity of the content within the subdimensions, certain themes were given new names during the translation process. Friends represents the ‘social interaction’/’connections’ theme, Judgement represents the ‘fitting in & judgement’ theme and Family represents the ‘upbringing & parental dependence’ theme from Gennings et al. (2021).

Table 3. Sample characteristics.

		Phase 1		Phase 2
		n	%	n	%
	n	180		242
Gender
	Male	73	40.56	91	37.60
	Female	104	57.78	147	60.74
	Other	2	1.11	3	1.24
	Rather not say	1	0.56	1	0.41
Ethnicity
	White	150	83.33	223	92.15
	Mixed	15	8.33	16	6.61
	Black	4	2.22	0	0.00
	Asian	5	2.78	1	0.41
	Other	6	3.33	2	0.83
Age
	Mean	13.55		13.91
	sd	1.55		1.78

Table 4. Decision making process throughout EFA.

EFA	Items Removed	Factor Loading	Reason
1	J3 F6	−.071 0.46–0.41–0.46	Negative loading CL
2	F9	0.5–0.45–0.4	CL
	F8	0.65–0.41	CL
	Fr5	0.6–0.48	ML and CL
3	F5	0.51–0.46	CL
	He8	0.46–0.54	CL
4	F3	0.54–0.41	CL
	He3	0.5–0.51	CL
5	F7	0.41–0.66	CL
	He2	0.47–0.42	CL
6	F4	0.45–0.4	CL
	Fr3	0.45–0.53	CL
7	Fr4	0.65	ML
	F1	0.44	ML
	F2	0.49	ML

Abbreviations: Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA); Mis-load (ML); Cross-load (CL); Flourishing (F); Judgement (J); Friends (Fr); Health (He).

Table 5. Summary of exploratory factor analysis.

Variable	Item	Factor 1:	Factor 2:	Factor 3:	Factor 4:	Factor 5:
		Acceptance	Family	Determination	Physical Health	Friends
Factor Loadings
	J6	0.78	0.23	0.12	0.07	0.26
	He6	0.76	0.29	0.20	0.31	0.03
	J1	0.75	0.30	0.26	0.05	0.13
	J4	0.74	0.37	0.27	0.12	0.07
	J5	0.73	0.36	0.28	0.15	0.03
	J2	0.71	0.23	0.17	0.10	0.30
	He10	0.68	0.35	0.30	0.30	−0.03
	He1	0.68	0.33	0.19	0.32	−0.05
	He5	0.57	0.20	0.09	0.36	−0.13
	Fa6	0.36	0.81	0.18	0.13	0.06
	Fa5	0.22	0.79	0.27	0.15	0.09
	Fa2	0.36	0.79	0.27	0.03	−0.04
	Fa3	0.32	0.72	0.18	0.19	−0.05
	Fa7	0.39	0.69	0.16	0.19	0.08
	Fa1	0.11	0.69	0.30	0.28	0.15
	Fa4	0.29	0.65	0.05	0.08	0.08
	D4	0.19	0.27	0.82	0.07	0.05
	D2	0.26	0.20	0.79	0.18	0.05
	D5	0.19	0.26	0.72	0.23	0.07
	D1	0.14	0.10	0.67	0.27	0.09
	D3	0.37	0.22	0.65	0.31	0.05
	He9	0.23	0.21	0.34	0.79	0.09
	He4	0.20	0.20	0.29	0.79	0.14
	He7	0.39	0.24	0.34	0.69	0.08
	Fr1	−0.01	0.00	−0.01	0.17	0.89
	Fr2	0.32	0.17	0.26	−0.02	0.75
Eigenvalues
		12.99	2.01	1.62	1.39	1.09
Variance Explained (%)
		49.97	7.72	6.24	5.36	4.21
Cronbach alpha
		0.94	0.92	0.88	0.89	0.68

Table 6. Parallel analysis.

	Raw data	Means from PA
Factor 1	12.99	1.77
Factor 2	2.00	1.64
Factor 3	1.62	1.55
Factor 4	1.39	1.47
Factor 5	1.09	1.40

Abbreviation: PA = Parallel analysis.

Table 7. Regression weight estimates, standardized and unstandardized, along with internal reliability scores of the WAWS.

Items (original label)	Subdimension	Standardized regression weight	Unstandardized regression weight	Standard error	Cronbach alpha
A4 (J4)	Acceptance	0.83	1.40	0.12	0.93
A3 (He1)		0.73	1.14	0.09
A5 (J6)		0.78	1.24	0.11
A6 (J1)		0.78	1.25	0.11
A2 (He10)		0.69	1.00
A8 (He5)		0.66	1.15	0.12
A7 (J2)		0.82	1.41	0.12
A1 (J5)		0.75	1.05	0.10
A9 (He6)		0.86	1.55	0.13
Fa4	Family	0.60	0.41	0.04	0.93
Fa3		0.80	0.91	0.05
Fa5		0.90	0.92	0.04
Fa6		0.92	0.92	0.04
Fa2		0.85	0.92	0.05
Fa1		0.89	1.00
Fa7		0.63	0.59	0.05
D2	Determination	0.67	1.02	0.12	0.85
D1		0.74	1.10	0.12
D4		0.62	1.00
D5		0.71	1.07	0.12
D3		0.80	1.44	0.15
Fr1	Friends	0.70	1.00		0.93
Fr99		0.72	1.33	0.19
PH2 (He4)	Physical Health	0.74	0.71	0.05	0.85
PH1 (He9)		0.92	1.00
PH3 (He7)		0.79	0.73	0.05

Table 8. Scale structure and items.

Subdimension	Items
Acceptance Perceptions of belonging within self and in a community	A1 Was able to be myself A2 Felt well within myself A3 Remember feeling mentally well A4 Felt like I belonged A5 Could be myself around others A6 Felt accepted by others A7 Was confident in being myself around others A8 Felt well-rested A9 Felt positive about myself
Determination Perceptions of drive to achieve personal goals	D1 Put in effort towards a task D2 Invested my efforts in something worthwhile D3 Kept going when things were too hard D4 Kept going when things got tough D5 Felt determined to achieve a goal
Family Perceptions of emotional and social support afforded by parents / carers	Fa1 Felt encouraged by my family Fa2 Felt my family were there for me when I needed them Fa3 Felt like my family listened to me Fa4 Felt safe at home Fa5 Remember when my family supported me Fa6 Felt supported by my family Fa7 Felt comfortable at home
Friends Perceptions of feeling socially connected to others	F1 Found the time to talk to friends F99 Spent time talking to friends
Physical Health Perceptions of feeling well within one’s self	PH1 Felt physically fit PH2 Felt comfortable with how much physical activity I do PH3 Remember feeling physically healthy

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