The factor structure of the mental health continuum-short form (MHC-SF) in Serbia: an evaluation using exploratory structural equation modeling

Abstract

Background: The Mental Health Continuum-Short Form (MHC-SF) is a brief measure to assess emotional, social, and psychological well-being.

Aims: We examined the factor structure of the MHC-SF in Serbia. A secondary goal was to examine measurement invariance and latent mean differences across gender.

Method: The methods of Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) and Exploratory Structural Equation Modeling (ESEM) were used to investigate the factor structure of the scale in a large sample (N = 1883). We compared 1-, 2-, and 3-factor models of mental well-being.

Results: The results supported the superiority of the 3-factor model of well-being over the alternatives. ESEM yielded better fit with the data and considerably smaller factor correlations than did CFA. ESEM also uncovered a number of cross-loadings in the MHC-SF. Full measurement invariance was established across gender, yet no significant gender differences were identified in the latent means.

Conclusions: These results indicate that emotional, social, and psychological well-being represents correlated yet distinct factors in Serbia. The results also suggest that ESEM is a more appropriate method than CFA for examining the factor structure of mental well-being. The contributions of ESEM to current debates surrounding the distinction between hedonic and eudaimonic well-being are discussed.

Keywords:

• mental health
• MHC-SF
• ESEM
• social well-being
• psychological well-being

Declaration of interest

The authors report no conflicts of interest. The authors alone are responsible for the content and writing of this article. This work was supported by the Ministry of Education, Science and Technological Development of the Republic of Serbia (Grant No. 179006).

Notes

¹When the ESEM model does not have a structural part, ESEM factors are identical to exploratory factor analysis (EFA) factors. Indeed, EFA can be considered as a special case of ESEM (Marsh et al., 2014). For technical details see Asparouhov & Muthen (2009) and Morin et al., 2013.