Janhavi Ajit Vaingankar, Mythily Subramaniam, Linda Wei Lin Tan, Edimansyah Abdin, Wei Yen Lim, Hwee Lin Wee, Siow Ann Chong, Rob Martinus van Dam
Abstract
Measures of mental well-being and positive mental health (PMH) have been largely developed and used in Western populations, however, data on representative Asian communities are lacking. Using data from a population sample, this study sought to establish psychometric properties and norms of the PMH Instrument (PMH-I), a measure of positive mental health developed in Singapore.
We conducted a nationally representative survey among 1925 adults aged 18-79 years of Chinese, Malay, Indian or other ethnicity. Participants reported socio-demographic characteristics and completed the PMH-I along with measures of health-related quality of life (HRQoL) and psychological distress. Construct validity of the PMH-I was assessed using confirmatory factor analysis and concurrent validity was tested through correlation with other psychological measures. Normative PMH values and differences in population subgroups were estimated.
The six-factor-higher-order structure of the PMH-I comprising six subscales of general coping, emotional support, spirituality, interpersonal skills, personal growth and autonomy and global affect was confirmed. Concurrent validity was shown through significant positive correlation of the total PMH score and its subscales with HRQoL and an inverse correlation with psychological distress. Weighted age, gender and ethnicity-specific norms were derived for the Singapore population. Total PMH was significantly higher in participants aged over 40 years as compared with 18-29 year olds and in non-Chinese ethnic groups as compared with Chinese. These differences were observed for all PMH-I subscales, with the exception of emotional support and interpersonal skills score differences by age. In contrast, gender, marital status, and education level were significantly associated with some of the subscales, but not with total PMH.
These results support the psychometric properties of the PMH-I in a multi-ethnic Asian population sample. The generalizable population-based norms support the application of the PMH-I for measuring mental health and assessing its determinants within the Singapore general population.
This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 6. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 17 March 2018.
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#5,810,623
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Outputs from BMC Medical Research Methodology
#826
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#102,393
of 333,790 outputs
Outputs of similar age from BMC Medical Research Methodology
#9
of 17 outputs
Altmetric has tracked 23,028,364 research outputs across all sources so far. This one has received more attention than most of these and is in the 74th percentile.
So far Altmetric has tracked 2,030 research outputs from this source. They typically receive a lot more attention than average, with a mean Attention Score of 10.2. This one has gotten more attention than average, scoring higher than 55% of its peers.
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We're also able to compare this research output to 17 others from the same source and published within six weeks on either side of this one. This one is in the 11th percentile – i.e., 11% of its contemporaries scored the same or lower than it.
