An examination of happiness in adolescence: validation of the Humboldt happiness scale

Thesis (M.A.)--Humboldt State University, Psychology: Academic Research, 2013The current study examined the psychometric properties of the Humboldt Happiness Scale Adolescent Version (HHS-AV: Reynolds, 2011) on a sample of 159 high school adolescents from Northern California. This research was conducted because there are no psychometrically sound measures for assessing happiness in adolescents. Happiness research is being conducted with college students and adults with a plethora of instruments to choose from. The goal of this study was to demonstrate that the HHS-AV is a reliable and valid scale to measure happiness in the adolescent population by examining the scale???s internal consistency reliability, criterion validity, construct validity and factorial validity. \ud As predicted the HHS-AV exhibited adequate levels of internal consistency reliability with a Cronbach???s alpha coefficient of .92 suggesting that the HHS-AV has minimal error variance. The HHS-AV demonstrated a strong relationship (r = .85) with an already established measure of happiness, the Oxford Happiness Questionnaire (OHQ: Hills & Argyle, 2002) to demonstrate criterion related validity. Evidence for construct validity was demonstrated by examining the relationships between happiness and other theoretically related constructs (self-esteem, depression, loneliness, and optimism) and unrelated constructs (antisocial behavior and social desirability) based on an a priori nomological network. The magnitudes of these relationships are sufficient evidence for both kinds of construct validity, convergent and discriminant, indicating the HHS-AV is a valid scale for use with adolescents. Factorial validity on the other hand did not yield a sound factor structure with this particular sample. A parallel analysis was conducted and both the principal component analysis and the principal axis factoring method yielded a different number of components/factors making the factor structure inconclusive for this sample. \ud Regression analyses demonstrated that all convergent validity variables were related to happiness but the strength of the predictions for the HHS-AV, which measures happiness as a state were different than the OHQ which measures happiness as a trait construct. Results from this study indicated that male and female adolescents do not differ in overall levels of happiness and there was a small but significant negative correlation between happiness and age using the HHS-AV. \ud Overall, this study indicates that the HHS-AV is a reliable and valid instrument for measuring happiness in adolescence. This is the first psychometric evaluation of the HHS-AV and more studies are needed to investigate this instrument and adolescent happiness further, but researchers can use this instrument with this age group with confidence that it is reliable and valid measure