Japanese cultural adaptation and validation of the Social Emotional Health Survey-Higher Education

ABSTRACT

Objectives

Educators in both Western and non-Western contexts are increasingly acknowledging the necessity of screening for students’ psychological dispositions to identify and effectively support at-risk students. The Social-Emotional Health Survey-Higher Education (SEHS-HE) has the potential to offer a practical yet comprehensive measure of positive psychological dispositions among Japanese higher education students.

Methods

The present study validated the SEHS – HE with a sample of 434 Japanese undergraduate university students aged 19–25 (Male = 184; Female = 247; gender not identified = 3).

Results

The confirmatory factor analyses supported the internal validity, concurrent validity, and internal and external reliability of the SEHS-HE with a second-order model. Higher covitality scores were associated with higher subjective wellbeing and lower psychological distress, which provided evidence of concurrent validity. These findings support further research into using the SEHS – HE as a universal wellness screener in Japanese higher education students to identify the social-emotional strengths of all students. It can also help identify students vulnerable to developing mental health disorders and needing extra social-emotional support services.

Conclusions

Further study is required to confirm the findings and establish how to use the SEHS – HE most effectively with Japanese higher education students in a culturally sensitive manner.

KEY POINTS

What is already known about this topic:

1. Japanese higher education students suffer from poor mental health with a high incident of suicide especially after the start of COVID-19 pandemic.

2. The SEHS-HE has been validated to have reasonable validity and reliability for measuring psychological dispositions among higher education students in the United States, Turkey, and Mexico.

3. Covitality measured by the SEHS-HE predict subjective wellbeing and psychological distress among higher education students in the United States, Turkey, and Mexico.

What this paper adds:

1. The Japanese adapted SEHS-HE has reasonable internal and external reliability for measuring psychological dispositions among Japanese higher education students.

2. Covitality measured by the SEHS-HE predict subjective wellbeing and psychological distress among Japanese higher education students.

3. The SEHS-HE could be used in the measures of subjective wellbeing and psychological distress screening Japanese students who are vulnerable to develop mentalhealth problems.

KEYWORDS:

• Social Emotional Health Survey
• university students
• scale validation
• mental health promotion
• Japanese

Acknowledgements

The authors thank the Japanese university students who participated into this study.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability statement

The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

Additional information

Funding

The work was supported by Japan Society for the Promotion of Science [Grant number: 20H01758].