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Date of Graduation
Summer 2012
Document Type
Dissertation
Degree Name
Doctor of Psychology (PsyD)
Department
Department of Graduate Psychology
Advisor(s)
Gregg Henriques
Cara Meixner
Trevor F. Stokes
Abstract
Although psychologists and psychotherapists have long been concerned with the construct of well-being, currently there exist only self-report measures of the construct. This is potentially problematic because, as a number of researchers have pointed out, there are many different kinds of biases that can undermine the validity of data obtained from self-report measures. The purpose of this project was to develop a comprehensive, user-friendly, clinician administered interview to assess well-being. In order to accomplish this, the Well-Being Interview (WBI) was developed, based on recent developments in positive psychology (e.g., Diener (2000), Ryff (1995) and Seligman (2011) and theoretical unification (Henriques, 2011). The WBI is a structured, clinician-administered assessment of well-being that evaluates well-being across ten different domains: Satisfaction, Engagement, Purpose, Health and Habits, Emotions, Relationships, Coping, Identity, Environmental Influences, and Trajectory. For each domain, individuals provide a narrative report reflecting on the domain, offer a quantitative rating, answer forced choice questions and are rated by the interviewer. Two hundred and fifty-eight participants filled out a series of self-report measures assessing a variety of constructs related to well-being online and a subset of fifty one subsequently participated in completing the WBI with trained evaluators. The measure performed well in terms of time of administration, comprehensiveness, and feasibility for use in clinical settings. Correlations with existing self-report measures were explored and future directions are discussed.
Recommended Citation
Asselin, Craig Alexander, "The development of the well-being interview" (2012). Dissertations, 2014-2019. 67.
https://commons.lib.jmu.edu/diss201019/67
