Adapting the ryff scales of psychological well being a 28 item vietnamese version for university students

Journal of Social Sciences and Humanities, Vol 5, No (2019) 176-197 Adapting the Ryff Scales of Psychological Well-being: a 28Item Vietnamese Version for University Students Raul Calderon Jr*, Nguyen Thi Nga, Truong Quang Tien, Bui Thi Tu Quyen, Nguyen Hoang Minh Thuan, Vu Viet Bao Abstract: Research in psychological well-being and correlates to general health have blossomed in the last 20-25 years However, little research exists in health and psychological well-being of the Vietnamese population, partially due to a lack of valid and reliable research instruments available in the Vietnamese language This study aimed to produce a short, valid and reliable research instrument in Vietnamese to assess the psychological well-being of university students The 54-item Ryff Scales of Psychological Well-being (RSPWB), a widely used and validated instrument, was the instrument of choice A research questionnaire, which included the RSPWB, was translated and completed by 253 Vietnamese undergraduate students (18-27 years of age) Analyses included the use of partial least squares, structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) - a second generation statistical technique for testing complex path models, to evaluate the validity and reliability of the 54 items As a result of the research, the PLS-SEM analyses produced a multidimensional model with six factors (autonomy, environmental mastery, purpose in life, personal growth, positive relations with others, and self-acceptance) and 28 items that demonstrated good convergent and discriminant validity and reliability Moreover, the 28-item Vietnamese version of the RSPWB supported the same multidimensional six-factor structure as proposed in the original RSPWB In conclusion, the adapted 28-item Vietnamese version of the RSPWB is shorter in length, has good psychometric properties, and helps to fill a current gap of available research instruments for advancing the current understanding of psychological wellbeing and relationships to health in Vietnamese university students Keywords: Ryff Scales of Psychological Well-being; Vietnam; University Students; Validation; PLS-SEM Received: 6th January 2019 ; Revised 15th April 2019; Accepted 23rd April 2019 DOI: https://doi.org/10.33100/jossh5.2.Calderon.etal Introduction Globalization and increased access to scientific materials to researchers around the world Researchers from most countries can access a variety of reliable and valid research instruments through the worldwide web Although access to scientific materials has become easier, it does not mean that instruments or scales in one language can automatically be used in countries with different languages and/or cultures Sousa & Rojjanasrirat (2011) recommend a series of steps in the translation and cross-validation technology have information and  Raul Calderon - Faculty of Sports Science, Kasetsart University, Kamphaeng Saen Campus, Nakhon Pathom, Thailand, email: raulthedoc@yahoo.com Nguyen Thi Nga, Truong Quang Tien, Bui Thi To Quyen - Hanoi University of Public Health, Vietnam Nguyen Hoang Minh Thuan, Vu Viet Bao - Ho Chi Minh City University of Sports, Vietnam 176 Raul Calderon Jr et al / Journal of Social Sciences and Humanities, Vol 5, No (2019) 176-197 process before instruments and scales are used in languages and/or cultures other than their original language Implementing such steps can improve the overall quality of cross-cultural research Background and significance Positive psychology has flourished over the last 20-25 years There is now more attention given to the positive aspects of human development and functioning (Seligman 2012) One of the specific domains that has garnered much attention is the field of well-being and in particular psychological well-being (Ryff 2013) Generally, well-being is thought to be a multi-faceted concept that includes subjective, social, and psychological dimensions as well as health-related behaviors (Seifert 2005) Research into the general field of well-being has advanced over the years and now is most prominent in the field of empirical psychology The amount of literature in the area of well-being (including the two main branches of subjective and psychological well-being) has flourished as researchers investigate this complex construct that concerns the understanding of optimal human experience and functioning (Deci and Ryan 2006) In the area of subjective well-being, the work by Diener (Diener et al 1999; Diener E 1984) into the nature of subjective wellbeing and life satisfaction, Lyubomirsky (1998) into subjective happiness, and Deci (1990) into personality integration, to mention only a few, have helped advance the understanding of the general field of subjective well-being However, one criticism of subjective well-being research has been that it is not fully grounded in theory 177 Ryff (1989) addressed this criticism by synthesizing the work of leading theorists such as Bühler‟s (1935) basic life tendencies that work toward fulfillment of life, Allport‟s (1961) conception of maturity, Neugarten‟s (1968) descriptions of personality change in adulthood and old age, Jahoda‟s (1979) positive criteria of mental health, Erikson‟s (1994) psychosocial stage model, Jung‟s (1935) formulation of individuation, Rodger‟s (1961) view of the fully functioning person, and Maslow‟s (1962) conception of self-actualization, and proposed a theory-based multidimensional model of psychological well-being (PWB) The theory-based multidimensional model proposed by Ryff (1989) consists of six dimensions The theoretical dimensions are (1) autonomy, (2) environmental mastery, (3) purpose in life, (4) personal growth, (5) positive relations with others, and (6) self-acceptance These six dimensions taken together are thought to compose the theoretical construct of PWB In other words, PWB is a composite construct consisting of multiple subconstructs Each sub-construct contributes a unique and important aspect of the broader construct of PWB To measure these constructs, Ryff developed three versions of the Ryff Scales of Psychological Well-being (RSPWB), including 84, 54, and 18 item versions All three versions have been used, validated, and sometimes modified to five to seven items per construct in previous studies In general, the longer versions show stronger psychometric properties, thus are recommended for serious research projects (van Dierendonck 2004; Ryff 1989; Ryff and Keyes 1995) The RSPWB is considered to be one of the leading instruments for assessing PWB Since the development of the RSPWB, it has 178 Raul Calderon Jr et al / Journal of Social Sciences and Humanities, Vol 5, No (2019) 176-197 been used in over 350 studies and translated into numerous languages (Cheng & Chan 2005; Freire et al 2016; Kitamura et al 2004; Lapa 2015; Ryff 2013; Woo Kyeong 2013) However, the majority of the research using the RSPWB is mostly from English speaking and western populations Therefore, a significant amount of the current knowledge and understanding of PWB primarily describes the US and European populations Less is known about PWB in Asian populations since few Asian countries have utilized validated instruments to assess PWB To assess PWB in an Asian population using the RSPWB, the instrument must be translated and validated into the host language The first published study in Vietnam to adopt the RSPWB for a Vietnamese population was conducted by Dang (2017) Her study indicated that the 84-item RSPWB (14-items/construct) had good reliability However, this study was not without its limitations First, the study‟s translation method was not explained thoroughly Second, convergent and discriminant validity was not fully established Third, the 84-item version is long and takes the longest time to complete Fourth, the second-order construct of PWB was not tested for significance Fifth, some of the sub-construct items overlapped with different items from other sub-constructs To confirm the findings by Dang (2017) and to produce a shorter user-friendly version of the RSPWB for the Vietnamese population the following study was conducted with the specific aims: (1) To use a reliable, accepted method of translation for the RSPWB (2) To determine if a fewer number of items of the RSPWB would produce acceptable convergent and discriminant validity and reliability using partial least squares, structural equation modeling (PLSSEM) - a second generation statistical technique (3) To determine the path coefficients of the six sub-constructs (autonomy, environmental mastery, purpose in life, personal growth, positive relations with others, and self-acceptance) and test the significance of the second-order construct of PWB (4) To compare the factorial structure of the adapted Vietnamese RSPWB to the original factorial structure of the RSPWB Method The three stages of this study are depicted in Table Table 1: List of components for each stage in the study Stage Stage Translation of research questionnaire Participants in main study Explored students‟ understanding of PWB and its related sub-constructs Data collection Components of the Vietnamese RSPWB questionnaire Conducted pilot study Stage the Statistical analysis Sample size and power Ethical approval Raul Calderon Jr et al / Journal of Social Sciences and Humanities, Vol 5, No (2019) 176-197 Stage Translation of Vietnamese RSPWB questionnaire A collaborative and iterative method was used for translating the study questionnaire into Vietnamese Although this method does not use a back translation step, it is still an acceptable alternative translation method This method provided a conceptual equivalence of translated items, which benefits comprehension and meaning to the respondent (Douglas and Craig 2007) Additionally, throughout the iterative steps, the translators referred back to the original English version when making edits A group of five native Vietnamese speakers, one Vietnamese university English lecturer (professional translator), and two Vietnamese research university professors, all who were fluent in English, were recruited to help translate the English questionnaire into Vietnamese The collaborative and iterative process proceeded as follows: Each translator was assigned approximately one-fifth of the English questionnaire to translate All translated parts were combined to create a complete translated Vietnamese questionnaire draft The translated questionnaire draft was then reviewed and rated by each translator for accuracy using a scale from (no accuracy) to 100 (excellent accuracy) Any item that did not receive an accuracy rating of 90 or higher was flagged In other words, every item in the questionnaire was checked for accuracy/equivalency to English version by five independent translators This assured a high-quality translation because each item needed the agreement of all translators to remain in the questionnaire Items that were flagged (i.e., received an accuracy rating of less than 90 by any of the 179 translators) were sent back to the translators for review and re-translation After the flagged items were corrected, a new edited draft was created The edited draft of the questionnaire was reviewed for accuracy/equivalency and edited by the professional translator (university English class lecturer) This provided an additional check on the quality of the translations done by the first set of translators Once this step was completed, a final draft was created Lastly, the final draft was reviewed and edited by two research university professors familiar with Vietnamese culture and research surveys This collaborative and iterative process generated the final version of the questionnaire Explored students’ understanding of PWB and its related sub-constructs Very little research of the PWB of the Vietnamese population has been done; thus, as a first step, a focus group session was scheduled with a group of university students Participants in the focus group included five female and four male undergraduate students from the English club at the Vietnam Maritime University of Haiphong All students were proficient in English, and the session was conducted in English by the lead author The session lasted approximately 90 minutes The main focus of the session was to explore the student‟s understanding of the concept of psychological well-being and its related subconstructs of autonomy, environmental mastery, personal growth, purpose in life, positive relations with others, and selfacceptance Students were asked questions of how they perceived PWB and its related sub-constructs In general, the students had an adequate grasp of these constructs and 180 Raul Calderon Jr et al / Journal of Social Sciences and Humanities, Vol 5, No (2019) 176-197 could relate to how the constructs related to their lives and the lives of other students The overall impression derived from the focus group was that students were familiar and comfortable in speaking about wellbeing and related constructs Components of Vietnamese RSPWB questionnaire The Vietnamese RSPWB questionnaire included the 54-item version of the RSPWB and 15 demographic questions The original RSPWB were developed to measure the multidimensional nature of psychological well-being (Ryff 1989) There are three versions of the RSPWB, with 84, 54, and 18 items per version, with 14, 9, and items per construct, respectively For this study, the version with 54-items was selected in order to minimize the overall length of the questionnaire and lessen survey fatigue The 54-item version of the RSPWB has six sub-scales (9-items per scale) The scales are (1) Autonomy (selfdetermination and independence), (2) Environmental Mastery (a sense of mastery and competence in managing one‟s environment), (3) Personal Growth (a feeling of continued development), (4) Purpose in Life (having goals in life and a sense of direction), (5) Positive Relations with Others (having warm, satisfying, trusting relationships with others), and (6) Self-acceptance (possessing a positive attitude towards the self) (see Supplemental Material 2) The six sub-scales are hypothesized to form the theoretical construct of PWB and changes in the six sub-scales will cause changes in the construct of PWB Each sub-scale consists of a mix of positive and negative sentences Participants responded using a six-point Likert scale ranging from (strongly disagree) to (strongly agree) Responses to negatively scored items (-) are reversed in the final scoring procedures so that high scores indicate high self-ratings on the dimension assessed Internal consistency for the different sub-scales in the English RSPWB version range from 86 to 93 and show good validity (van Dierendonck 2004) Dang (2017) reported internal consistency ranging from 83 to 92 in the Vietnamese version of the RSPWB Conducted pilot study Students from the English club at the Vietnam Maritime University of Haiphong sent invitations (via social media) to their university friends asking them to complete the Vietnamese RSPWB questionnaire online Thirty-nine undergraduate students (17 female, and 22 male) responded to the invitation After 3-4 days, these 39 students were asked to complete the questionnaire a second time Twenty-three of the 39 students completed the questionnaire a second time Most students completed the questionnaire within 20-25 minutes Participants used their smartphones, at a convenient time of their choosing, to access a link sent to them via social media directing them to the questionnaire online hosted on SurveyMonkey, a commercial data collection website (Survey n.d.) Reliability analysis of the six sub-constructs yielded good internal consistency ranging from 69 to 90 Test re-test reliability ranged from 0.849 (positive relations with others) to 0.523 (self-acceptance) Stage Participants in the main study The participants of the main study were public health undergraduate students enrolled at the Hanoi University of Public Health, Vietnam A total of 530 public health students (77.3% female and 22.7% male) were enrolled in the university during Raul Calderon Jr et al / Journal of Social Sciences and Humanities, Vol 5, No (2019) 176-197 the school year 2016-17) Research team members contacted the Department of Undergraduate Education, the Department of Student Affairs, and all undergraduate course instructors (total of 16 instructors) to explain the purpose of the study All course instructors (four instructors per grade level, 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 4th year) agreed to allow their classes to participate in the study Data collection A population sampling method was used for this study All students enrolled in the university were eligible and invited, via individual classrooms, to complete the Vietnamese RSPWB questionnaire by accessing the questionnaire online using their smartphones or computer A research team member visited each classroom to explain the purpose of the study, invite students to participate, and provide the link to the online questionnaire Data collection via the SurveyMonkey website was open approximately five weeks (during the Fallsemester of 2016) The researchers sent weekly messages, during the open data collection period, to course instructors asking them to remind and encourage their students to complete the online questionnaire Researchers also enlisted the help of school clubs, posted reminder posters around campus, and used social media to remind and encourage students to participate Participation was voluntary Students did not receive any course credit for completing the questionnaire A total of 253 undergraduate students (81% female, and 19% male, with a median age of 20) completed the Vietnamese RSPWB questionnaire for a 45.7% response rate Ten cases were deleted due to missing data (>10%) leaving a total N of 243 for analysis Less than 5% of the cases had RSPWB missing data 181 Stage Statistical analyses Data was analyzed using SPSS/PC version 22 for descriptive statistics in the pilot and main study The SPSS median imputation method was used to impute RSPWB missing data The SmartPLS version 2.0 software (Ringle, Wende, and Will 2005) was used to determine the reliability and validity of the PWB measurement and structural model The PLS-SEM statistical technique was chosen for three important reasons: (1) PLSSEM can provide unique theoretical insights and prevent the misspecification of statistical models and hence erroneous results; (2) PLS-SEM is the preferable statistical technique when a model includes both reflective and formative constructs; and (3) PLS-SEM should be used when a model includes formative factors and has more than 40-50 indicators (Lowry and Gaskin 2014) Lowry and Gaskin (2014) recommend using a 4-step approach for PLS-SEM analysis Step 1: model specification Figure shows the specified model that was tested The figure shows the measurement model, which included six reflective first-order latent variables (LVs): (1) autonomy, (2) environmental mastery, (3) purpose in life, (4) personal growth, (5) positive relations with others, and (6) self-acceptance and the structural model, which included one second-order formative LV, Psychological Well-being Each first-order LV had nine indicators, which were hypothesized to reflect the theoretical construct of their corresponding LV The direction of the indicator arrows is important as it determines whether the LV should be specified as a reflective or formative 182 Raul Calderon Jr et al / Journal of Social Sciences and Humanities, Vol 5, No (2019) 176-197 construct Reflective construct arrows point from the construct (causal) to their indicators (effect) In other words, a change in the construct will cause a change in the indicators On the other hand, formative construct arrows point in the opposite direction, from the indicators (causal) to an LV (effect) So, a change in the indicators will cause a change in the LV PWB is a second-order formative construct because the arrows of the six LVs all point to it Specifying reflective and formative LVs, as mentioned above, was important to prevent the misspecification of the statistical model and hence avoid erroneous results Figure 1: Measurement and Structural Model of Psychological Well-being and proposed six sub-constructs: Autonomy, Environmental Mastery, Personal Growth, Purpose in Life, Positive Relations with Others, and SelfAcceptance Raul Calderon Jr et al / Journal of Social Sciences and Humanities, Vol 5, No (2019) 176-197 Step 2: determine the construct validity of reflective constructs The SmartPLS2 software was used to establish convergent and discriminant validity To run the required factor analysis the „factor weighting‟ scheme and bootstrapping procedure of „5000 sub-samples‟ were selected The PLS algorithm default report table (Bootstrapping, Outer loadings (Mean, STDEV, T-Values)) was used to determine convergent validity, and the cross-loadings and average variance extracted (AVE) tables were used to determine discriminant validity An example of using SmartPLS2 to perform a factor analysis can be seen on Gaskination‟s YouTube channel (Gaskin 2012) Step 3: establish the reliability of the reflective constructs: Reliability is a measure of internal consistency required in reflective (internally correlated) latent variables To establish reliability, the composite reliability measures should be greater than 0.700 (Chin 1998) The PLS algorithm computes a composite reliability score, which is found in the default report under the overview tab of the quality criteria section When using PLS-SEM composite reliability is generally regarded as the more appropriate criterion to establish internal consistency reliability as compared to Cronbach‟s Alpha (Hair et al 2012) The PLS algorithm (selecting „factor weighting‟ scheme) and bootstrapping procedure (selecting „5000 sub-samples‟) was used for determining composite reliability Step 4: provide and interpret final statistics: In the last step, the measurement model statistics (Table 6) and a summary of the path coefficients and significance levels of the structural model (Table 7) were calculated The PLS algorithm (selecting „path weighting‟ scheme) and bootstrapping 183 procedure (selecting „5000 sub-samples‟) were used to estimate the structural model Sample size and power Sample size in PLS is commonly determined by either multiplying 10 times the scale with the largest number of formative indicators or by multiplying 10 times the largest number of structural paths directed at a particular construct in the structural model (Lowry and Gaskin 2014) This study had six structural paths (see figure 1) directed at one second-order construct, which means the study needed a minimum sample size of 60 (10 * 6) However, this method has been criticized for being too liberal To ensure the study had enough power over 250 participants (more than four times the minimum required) were recruited Ethical approval Approval for this study was granted by the university research review board Students received written informed consent at the beginning of the online questionnaire and were informed that all data collected would be anonymous Results A translated and easy to use formatted Vietnamese version of the 54-item RSPWB was used to collect the data (see supplemental material 1) At the end of the questionnaire, the resulting shorter version with 28 items is indicated by item number Tables 2-6 present the results related to Aim #2: To determine if a fewer number of items of the RSPWB would produce acceptable convergent and discriminant validity and reliability Table provides evidence of the significance of the loadings of each 184 Raul Calderon Jr et al / Journal of Social Sciences and Humanities, Vol 5, No (2019) 176-197 indicator within each latent variable All indicators of the latent variables should have a significant t-statistic (> 1.96) in order to demonstrate adequate convergent validity As shown in Table 2, the data meets this criterion, except items aut3, pg14, pl11, and sa12 The four non-significant (ns) indicators were removed from the model and not included in further analysis Overall, 50 of the 54 indicators among the six latent variables had significant t-statistic values This suggests that 50 indicators were valid and converged onto their respective construct Table 2: T-statistics for Convergent Validity Construct (latent variable) Indicator t-statistic p value Autonomy aut10 6.34 p