Psychometric properties of children’s subjective well-being scales : a multigroup study investigating school type, gender, age and region of children in the south and southeast regions of Brazil

Abstract

This study is part of the third wave of data collection of the international project “Children’s Worlds” (Children’s Worlds, the International Survey of Children’s Well-Being – ISCWeB). The objective was to check the psychometric properties of three child subjective well-being scales—the Children’s Worlds Subjective Well-Being Scale (CW-SWBS), the Children’s Worlds Domain-Based Subjective Well-Being Scale (CW-DBSWBS), and the Overall Life Satisfaction (OLS)—in relation to school type, gender, age, and residential region. The research was conducted in the metropolitan regions of the states of Rio de Janeiro, Rio Grande do Sul, Santa Catarina, Paraná, and São Paulo, Brazil. Participants were 2676 students from three different age groups (8, 10, and 12 years old), 54.05% girls, with 70.74% enrolled in public school. The results found the psychometric properties of the instruments as adequate, and found evidence of convergent validity of both the CW-SBWS and the CW-DBSBWS with the OLS, which provides support for the use of these instruments in Brazil. These results contribute to the canon of research on children's subjective well-being, in a Latin American context.