Digital Flourishing in the U.S.: Validation of the Digital Flourishing Scale (DFS) and Demographic Exploration

ABSTRACT

An increasing number of research studies have focused on exploring both the negative and positive effects of computer-mediated communication on individuals’ mental health and well-being. However, there is a lack of a comprehensive scale that measures an individual’s online well-being. The 25-item Digital Flourishing Scale (DFS) was introduced to measure the 25-item Digital Flourishing Scale (DFS) to measure individuals’ positive perceptions of experiences and behaviors in mediated social interactions. The current pre-registered study aimed to establish the convergent, discriminant, and concurrent criterion validity of the DFS and its five subscales (connectedness, authentic self-presentation, civil participation, positive social comparison, self-control). Additionally, the study aimed to explore digital flourishing among different demographic groups. A Qualtrics sample of N = 486, representative of the American population in terms of age, gender, ethnicity, and income, was obtained in December 2021. Convergent validity was established for four out of the five subscales. Discriminant validity for the overall DFS score has been confirmed. The DFS was found to have a positive correlation with general well-being and a negative correlation with mental health problems (for three of the subscales after controlling for age). Furthermore, the study suggests a digital divide in terms of digital flourishing in relation to education and income. Several interesting findings related to demographics, digital flourishing, and mental health are discussed.

KEYWORDS:

• Well-being
• digital divide
• mental health
• scale testing

Disclosure Statement

The authors have no relevant financial or non-financial interests to disclose.

Data Availability Statement

The study was pre-registered: https://osf.io/e4m8z/?view_only=e1480f1184a64351aebeab26a8756c56

The data that supports the findings of this study including Supplemental Materials are openly available in OSF https://osf.io/au49s/?view_only=dcd99ff4f9284950832e40fb8a0335f1

Notes

1. Outcomes of well-being were assessed as well but have already been reported in another publication (Janicke-Bowles et al., 2023). Consequently, those results will only be mentioned in the discussion section of this paper.

2. In the pre-registration it was indicated that we would analyze the relationship between the DFS and two well-being measures (flourishing (Diener et al., 2010) and satisfaction with life (Diener et al., 1985)). However, these analyses were now reported in another publication (Janicke-Bowles et al., 2023) and therefore are largely omitted from this current report.

3. The results of the DFS and the well-being measures were reported elsewhere (Janicke-Bowles et al., 2023) See Supplemental Material.

Additional information

Funding

The work was supported by the Chapman University .

Notes on contributors

Sophie Janicke-Bowles

Sophie H. Janicke-Bowles (Ph.D., Florida State University, 2013) is an associate professor in the School of Communication at Chapman University. Her research interests include the role that new and traditional media play in promoting and affecting character development, self-transcendent emotions, prosocial behavior, and well-being. [email protected]