| Abstract: | Happiness has drawn great attention to the field of positive psychology studies recently and proper measurements are necessary for advancing research in happiness. The concept of happiness may be viewed differently across different cultures, which in turn highlights the importance of cultural-fitness of happiness measurements. So far, there is no known measurement assessing happiness considering specific Vietnamese culture, to the best of my knowledge. This study aimed to validate a new scale to assess the happiness of Vietnamese from the cultural diversity perspective, named the Vietnamese Happiness Inventory (VHI). The total participants were 637 adult Vietnamese. This study included item development, scale development, and scale evaluation stages. The item development stage generated items through examining and combining items of the Chinese Happiness Inventory and Oxford Happiness Questionnaire through back-translation and content validity (expert review and pre-test) procedures. The scale development stage (n = 371) included item reduction and extraction of factors procedures. The scale evaluation stage (n = 266) included tests of reliability and validity of the VHI. Also, the test-retest correlation (n = 40) was conducted within a 2-week interval. The VHI resulted in 18 items with three dimensions (positive affect, negative affect, and life satisfaction). The results found a sufficient level of item discrimination, content validity, internal consistency reliability, test-retest reliability, and construct validity for the VHI in Vietnam. The VHI was consistently associated with life satisfaction, psychological distress, well-being, and mental health problems. Findings from this study suggest that VHI is a reliable and valid scale to measure happiness for Vietnamese. The VHI developed in this study may contribute to the line of study in happiness and measurement for the happiness for Vietnamese.
Happiness has drawn great attention to the field of positive psychology studies recently and proper measurements are necessary for advancing research in happiness. The concept of happiness may be viewed differently across different cultures, which in turn highlights the importance of cultural-fitness of happiness measurements. So far, there is no known measurement assessing happiness considering specific Vietnamese culture, to the best of my knowledge. This study aimed to validate a new scale to assess the happiness of Vietnamese from the cultural diversity perspective, named the Vietnamese Happiness Inventory (VHI). The total participants were 637 adult Vietnamese. This study included item development, scale development, and scale evaluation stages. The item development stage generated items through examining and combining items of the Chinese Happiness Inventory and Oxford Happiness Questionnaire through back-translation and content validity (expert review and pre-test) procedures. The scale development stage (n = 371) included item reduction and extraction of factors procedures. The scale evaluation stage (n = 266) included tests of reliability and validity of the VHI. Also, the test-retest correlation (n = 40) was conducted within a 2-week interval. The VHI resulted in 18 items with three dimensions (positive affect, negative affect, and life satisfaction). The results found a sufficient level of item discrimination, content validity, internal consistency reliability, test-retest reliability, and construct validity for the VHI in Vietnam. The VHI was consistently associated with life satisfaction, psychological distress, well-being, and mental health problems. Findings from this study suggest that VHI is a reliable and valid scale to measure happiness for Vietnamese. The VHI developed in this study may contribute to the line of study in happiness and measurement for the happiness for Vietnamese. |
