Psychometric validity and measurement invariance of the caring for Bliss Scale in the Philippines and the United States

Abstract

The Caring for Bliss Scale (CBS) is a new measure that assesses an individuals’ capacity to cultivate inner joy and happiness. Developed in the United States, its generalizability remains unknown in non-Western contexts. This research explored the scale’s cross-national invariance among college students in the Philippines (n = 546) and the United States (n = 643). A multi-group confirmatory factor analysis using maximum likelihood estimation showed that the unidimensional model of caring for bliss exhibited configural, metric, scalar, and residual invariance across the Filipino and the U.S. samples. This scale also had good internal consistency estimates in both settings. In both contexts, caring for bliss was positively correlated with well-being and negatively correlated with different negative quality of life indicators (i.e., stress, anxiety, and depression). This study offered preliminary evidence regarding the cross-national applicability of the CBS in different cultural settings during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Keywords:

• Caring for Bliss Scale
• cross-cultural invariance
• Philippines
• United States

Conflict of interest

There is no conflict of interest in the present study.

Funding

There is no funding received to implement this project.

Permission to reproduce material from other sources

There were no materials reproduced from other sources.

Data availability statement

Data are available from the corresponding author upon request.