Psychological well-being in students: Cultural adaptation and revision of the Ryff model
Abstract
This study presents a psychometric evaluation of Ryff’s Psychological Well-Being (PWB) scale for Chinese international students from mainland China studying in Malaysia. With a sample of 335 participants, we implemented a comprehensive analytical approach incorporating Rasch analysis, confirmatory factor analysis (CFA), and exploratory factor analysis (EFA) to assess and refine the scale’s structure. Initial Rasch modeling in a pilot sample (N = 110) identified problematic items that exhibited measurement misfit. When applying CFA to test the original six-factor model in the main study, we discovered high interfactor correlations and inadequate discriminant validity, particularly among four dimensions. Through model respecification and validation, we developed a more parsimonious three-factor solution that consolidated Environmental Mastery, Personal Growth, Purpose in Life, and Self-Acceptance into a unified construct while retaining Autonomy and Positive Relations as distinct factors. The optimized 15-item, three-factor model demonstrated excellent psychometric properties (χ²/df = 1.305, CFI = 0.995, TLI = 0.994, SRMR = 0.022, RMSEA = 0.030). These findings suggest that psychological well-being may manifest in a more integrated manner among Chinese international students from mainland China adapting to cross-cultural environments than originally theorized. This refined model offers researchers and practitioners a more culturally appropriate and psychometrically sound instrument for assessing psychological well-being in international student populations, while contributing to our understanding of how cultural context may influence the structural manifestation of psychological constructs.
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