Introducing the Well-Being Picture Scale (WPS)

Sarah Hall Gueldner, DSN, FAAN¹, Yvonne Michel, PhD², Martha Hains Bramlett, RN, PhD³, Chin-Fang Liu, MSN⁴, Linda Johnston, PhD⁵, Emiko Indo, PhD⁵, Hideko Minegishi, PhD⁵, and Mayble Searcy Carlyle, MN⁵. (1) Decker School of Nursing, Binghamton University, Binghamton, NY, USA, (2) College of Nursing, Medical University of South Carolina, Charleston, SC, USA, (3) Nursing, University of North Carolina, Charlotte, NC, USA, (4) School of Nursing, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA, USA, (5) x, x, x, IN, USA

This presentation introduces the Well-Being Picture Scale (WPS), a newly developed easy-to-administer instrument to measure sense of well-being in the broadest possible range of populations, including persons who for any reason are unable to read English text, or who may be too sick or frail to respond to lengthier or more complex measures. Ten pairs of 1-inch line drawings depicting a sense of high or low well-being are arranged at opposite ends of a seven-choice, unnumbered semantic differential scale. Individuals are asked to mark the point along each scale to indicate which image they feel most like; i.e., more like a lighted or unlit candle? Reliability of the tool was established in a sample of more than 2000 generally healthy individuals from the United States, Taiwan, Japan, Canada, and Africa. The scale has been translated into Taiwanese, Japanese, Arabic, Korean, and Spanish. Cronbach’s alpha of the instrument is .88. Field-testing has confirmed significant correlations between the tool and established text instruments that measure well-being, including Cantril’s Ladder for Well-being (p < .05) and Barrett’s measure of Power as Knowing Participation in Change (p < .01). The WPS is available in a paper and pencil format, and is presently under development as an online tool.