Investigating the Psychometric Adequacy of the Persian Version of the Psychologically Rich Life Questionnaire in the Student and General Population

Arbezi, Mohsen; Noorozi Ghader Loo, Zahra

doi:10.22055/psy.2023.43440.3006

Investigating the Psychometric Adequacy of the Persian Version of the Psychologically Rich Life Questionnaire in the Student and General Population

Document Type : Research Article

Authors

Mohsen Arbezi

Zahra Noorozi Ghader loo

Department of Education and Psychology, Faculty of Educational Sciences and Psychology, Shiraz University, Shiraz, Iran.

10.22055/psy.2023.43440.3006

Abstract

Introduction
A psychologically rich life is the other psychologically desirable life that has recently been conceptualized and introduced by experts in the field of well-being. Another example of a good life is a psychologically rich life, defined by Oishi et al. (2019) as a life with various interesting and perspective-changing experiences. According to them, a psychologically rich life is achieved through novel experiences gained from travel, film, music, sports, and art. Oishi et al. (2019) emphasize that the perspective-changing nature of experiences is essential for a psychologically rich life, such that interesting experiences that do not lead to perspective-changing experiences cannot add to a psychologically rich life. Conceptualizing psychologically rich life as another type of desirable life will stimulate relational and interventional research on psychologically rich life. Normativeizing the Persian version of the psychologically rich life Questionnaire (Oishi et al., 2019) could enable empirical investigation of psychologically rich life in Iranian society and lead Iranian researchers to advance in this field along with international research. Thus, the purpose of the present study was to investigate the psychometric properties of the Persian version of the Psychologically Rich Life Questionnaire (Oishi et al., 2019) in two general population groups and College students. For this purpose, two studies were conducted. The first study was conducted on the general population, and the second was on the student population.
Method
In the first study, 450 people from the general population of Shiraz were selected using the convenience sampling method, And they responded to Psychologically rich life questionnaires (Oishi et al., 2019), depression-short form (Beck et al., 1996) and meaning of life (Steger, 2010). In the second study, 220 students of Shiraz University who were studying in the academic year of 2019-2020 were selected by convenience sampling method and answered Psychologically rich life questionnaires (Oishi et al., 2019), the flourishing scale (Diener et al., 2010), the scale of positive and negative feelings (Diener et al., 2010) and the life satisfaction questionnaire (Diener et al., 1985). Convenience sampling was used due to the COVID-19 pandemic and the resulting university closures. An electronic questionnaire was designed, and for the general population, the questionnaire link was sent to participants through family and newsgroups. Also, in the student community, the questionnaire link was placed in student groups by professors and department heads. Before responding to the electronic questionnaire, an option was provided to obtain their consent. SPSS-16 and AMOS-21 statistical software analyzed data. The content, construct, convergent and divergent validity of the mentioned questionnaire were investigated using the opinions of educational and clinical psychology experts, exploratory factor analysis, confirmatory factor analysis and correlation coefficients of Psychologically rich life components with related variables, respectively. In order to investigate the reliability of the questionnaire, Cranach's alpha coefficient was used.

Results
Experts confirmed the representativeness of the questionnaire items to measure psychologically rich life. In the first study, both types of exploratory factor analysis and confirmatory factor analysis were used for construct validity. Exploratory factor analysis showed that the Persian version of the psychologically rich life questionnaire consists of three factors under the headings of «new and various experiences», «unusual experiences», and «non-uniformity». Confirmatory factor analysis also confirmed the fit of the three-factor model with the data. Also, in this study, the logical relationship between the components of a psychologically rich life and related variables indicates this questionnaire's convergent and divergent validity. In the second study, confirmatory factor analysis showed that the three-factor model of a psychologically rich life is consistent with the data. In this study, the logical relationship between the components of a psychologically rich life with related variables indicates the convergent and divergent validity of the questionnaire. In both studies, Cranach's alpha coefficient confirms the reliability of the questionnaire.

Conclusion
The research findings show that the questionnaire mentioned has suitable psychometric indicators for measuring the psychologically rich life of the general and student population; researchers can use it.

Keywords

Psychologically rich life

validity

reliability

student population

general population

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