Perceived Happiness and General Health: An IRT Investigation

Peter D. Hart^{1, 2,}

¹Exercise Science, Glenville State University, Glenville, West Virginia, USA

²Health Promotion Research, Havre, Montana, USA;Kinesmetrics Lab, Tallahassee, Florida, USA

Cite this paper:
Peter D. Hart. Perceived Happiness and General Health: An IRT Investigation. Research in Psychology and Behavioral Sciences. 2023; 11(2):49-55. doi: 10.12691/rpbs-11-2-3

Abstract

Background: Measuring latent outcomes such as patient satisfaction, health-related quality of life, and depression has been a common procedure in medical and epidemiological research. However, assessing the latent construct of perceived happiness has been less prevalent. Moreover, recent pilot data suggest that perceived happiness may serve as a useful outcome in epidemiological studies. Therefore, the aim of this study was to evaluate an existing measure of perceived happiness using advanced psychometric analyses. Methods: Participants in this study were N = 302 adults, 18+ years of age, who completed an electronic health and fitness survey. Happiness was assessed using the Subjective Happiness Scale (SHS). The SHS is a four-item scale with seven response categories measuring general happiness from intrinsic and relative perspectives. A graded response item-response theory (IRT) model was used to psychometrically evaluate the SHS. Additionally, a single item general health measure was used to further validate the SHS. SAS procedures including PROC IRT were applied. Results: The IRT analysis indicated that all four items fit a unidimensional construct with large item slopes (1.71 to 4.98) and varied item thresholds (-3.13 to 1.12). Factor analysis of the SHS polychoric correlation matrix retained a single factor explaining 77.8% variance. Additionally, internal consistency reliability (α = 0.88) indicated a reliable SHS. Finally, SHS scores examined between known groups showed that those reporting good general health had significantly (p < .001) greater perceived happiness than those reporting poor general health. Conclusion: Results from this study show that a brief four-item perceived happiness scale may have value in epidemiological research.

Keywords:
happiness health Epidemiology Surveillance

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