Tool to access Psychological Wellness among the Indian Elderly: A New Scale

This scale was developed to study the psychological wellness in Indian elderly aged 60 years and above. Psychological wellness is defined as a multidimensional construct comprising of autonomy, environmental mastery, happiness, life satisfaction, morale, personal growth, positive relationship with others and self acceptance with optimal functioning when these dimensions are in balance. This optimal functioning is a continuous process. The present study intended for the validation and standardization of the tool on 50 Indian elderly couples (n=100). Internal consistency of the scale was determined through Chronbach's Alpha and it was 0.90, quite high and significant at 0.001 level. About content (face & logical) validity of the scale good correspondence was found to exist between the scale results and the considered judgments of expert/experienced observers. Using a more structured method, confirmatory factor analysis present evidence about the measures’ convergent and discriminant validity. Ten factors emerged in factor analysis explaining 69.53% of the total variance. Percentile norms were developed for further investigations, interventions and application of the tool on all the 50 Indian elderly couples.