Flourish Index and Secure Flourish Index – Development and Validation

Abstract

The purpose of this paper was to investigate psychometric properties of the newly proposed Flourish Index (FI) and Secure Flourish Index (SFI). Data were obtained from the Health and Well-Being Survey – conducted in June and July 2017, with responses from 4210 residents of North Carolina, USA.

Exploratory and confirmatory factor models were used. An exploratory approach was used to investigate item groupings. Confirmatory factor models were used to investigate the hierarchical structure of the indices, level of common variance and percent of uncontaminated correlations. The coefficient of omega hierarchical was computed to establish uni-dimensionality and reliability of the indices. Configural, metric and scalar measurement invariance were examined to provide evidence on the universality of the indices. Convergent validity and discriminant validity were assessed.

This study provided support that FI and SFI can be used in empirical research. Our results confirmed groupings of items into domains of flourishing as well hierarchical structure of both indices. With application of the factor analytical framework support for their uni-dimensionality was found. The analysis revealed that scores derived from FI and SFI primarily reflected a single common source, flourishing and secure flourishing, respectively, implying legitimate use of raw scores (average or sum) for their measurement. Both indices demonstrated convergent and discriminant validity. Evidence was also found that both instruments were measurement invariant.

Keywords: flourish index and secure flourish index; factor analysis; measurement invariance; bi-factor model; psychometric properties