Poster Presentation 6th World Congress on Positive Psychology 2019

Translation, Adaptation and Validation of Positive Education Instruments in Chinese and Spanish Contexts (#598)

Ye He 1 , Bryant Hutson 2 , Jiajie Liu 3 , Juan Antonio Valdivia Vázquez 4
  1. University of North Carolina at Greensboro, Greensboro, NC, United States
  2. University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC, United States
  3. Tsinghua University, Beijing, China
  4. Universidad Tecmilenio, Monterrey, Mexico

With the increasing application of positive education in the global context, various positive psychology instruments such as the Satisfaction with Life Scale (SWLS; Diener et al., 1985), Subjective Happiness Scale (SHS, Lyubomirsky & Lepper, 1999), and the PERMA-Profiler (Butler & Kern, 2016) have been translated and adapted for use in various linguistic and cultural settings. While there are general methodological guidelines for translating, adapting and validating instruments in cross-cultural settings, great variation is reflected in empirical practices (Maneesriwongul & Dixon, 2004; Sousa & Rojjanasrirat, 2011). For positive psychology constructs, cross-cultural validity and invariance has not been sufficiently examined (Bieda, et al., 2017). In this systematic review, we identified published empirical studies using positive psychology instruments in Chinese- and Spanish-speaking educational contexts within the last ten years (2008-2018). Based on the systematic synthesis of the studies within and across linguistic contexts, we highlighted the translation, adaptation, and validation procedures and results across Chinese- and Spanish-speaking educational settings. Recommendations for researchers using positive education instruments in diverse linguistic and cultural contexts were provided.