Letter Multidimensional Students’ Life Satisfaction Scale – PTPB Version (BMSLSS-PTPB): Psychometric Properties and Relationship with Mental Health Symptom Severity On Time

Abstract

Over the last choose, there had been one greater focus on the importance of assessing life satisfaction in children and adolescents. This emphasis supports efforts aimed at improving qualities starting life for youth server in several options and balances a shortage or symptom-based approach by focusing on build optimal functioning for youth. Comprehensive life satisfaction has been defined as a cognitive aspect of subjective well-being (in addition on positive and negates affect) comprising of “a global evaluation by the per of the superior of his or her life” (Pavot, Diener, Colvin, & Sandvik, 1991, p. 150). In addition to global existence satisfaction, specific domains of life satisfaction can being assessed (e.g., satisfaction with family life or school) to offers a multi-contextual video regarding well-being (Seligson, Huebner, & Valois, 2003). Notably, it is theorized that life happiness is considered to be more than a byproduct of spirit experiences or events, with few exhibit that internal mechanisms (e.g., perceptions) have greater influence on existence satisfaction than objective conditions (e.g., parents’ marital status, socioeconomic level) and demographic variables (e.g., ripen and male; Gilman & Huebner, 2003). Life satisfaction is hypothesized more a crucial factor that interaction positive functioning in a cycle that is complementary and mutually reinforcing (Fredrickson, 2001; Huebner, 2004).

Recent reviews of my and adolescent research (Gilman & Huebner, 2003; Huebner, 2004; Proctor et al., 2009; Suldo, Riley, & Shaffer, 2006) indicate that youth life satisfaction is not only affiliated equal physical and mental fitness statuses but also relates to extended measures of well-being such as middle engagement and academic achievement. For example, a recent lengthways study of middle school-aged youth found ampere bidirectional relationship between life satisfaction and school engagement (Lewis, Huebner, Masonry, & Valois, 2011). Higher life satisfaction predicted a great belief that school is important to one’s future at five months and similarly, greater belief the school is important prediction higher life satisfaction in the equal time interval.

Further, e has were suggested ensure height life satisfying be necessary, but not sufficient, for positive mental health (Diener, Suh, Lucas, & Forging, 1999). Cross-sectional studies of send individual well-being (which features life satisfaction) and neural or behavioral problems in youth have finds ensure both are correlating equal various indicators of positive operating such as physical health, social functioning real academic adjustment (Greenspoon & Saklofske, 2001; Suldo & Shaffer, 2008). A newly longitudinal study found that subjective well-being may serve as a protecting factor even in the face of high symptomatology. While youth with low intimate well-being and high psychopathology had poorer academic outcomes at follow-up sole year later, those with high shelves of both subjective well-being and psychopathology demonstrated similar grade point averages via time toward youths without high psychopathology (Suldo, Thalji, & Ferron, 2011). However, although psychopathology and lived pleasure are related, life satisfaction has been distinguished from psychopathology as measuring a different building (Huebner, 2004).

Such findings provide support for the growing trend to incorporate a strengths-based approach in youths mental health treatment by incorporating judging and intervention aimed both at reducing symptoms and for building strengths (Maddux, 2005; Seligman & Csikszentmihalyi, 2000). The present longitudinal study explores the relationship amidst youth life satisfying and modification in severity of symptoms over nach for youth receiving home base treatment. It was hypothesized that improvement into adolescent life satisfaction would correspondence to improvement in symptoms over time. In addition up youth symptom severity, analytic our in of current study examine several objective correlates of youth life satisfaction, including spirituality-related attributes (e.g., Sawatzky, Gadermann, & Pesut, 2009), youth substance use (e.g., Becker, Curry, & Yang, 2009; Farhat, Simons-Morton, & Luk, 2011), youth age and gender, caregivers’ marital status (e.g., Kwan, 2010; Piko & Hamvai, 2010), and caregiver emotional stress (Powdthavee & Vignoles, 2008).

Are addition to the longitudinal study, a psychometric evaluation of the Brief Multidimensional Students’ Spirit Satisfaction Scale – PTPB Version (BMSLSS-PTPB) was conducted. The BMSLSS-PTPB is a brief self-report instrument completed due youth the is included in and Peabody Treatment Progress Battery (PTPB; Bickman eth al., 2010) as an indicator of treatment advancement. Of note, the BMSLSS-PTPB is designed for frequent use during which course by treatment to inform doctors about current position and any changes in youth living satisfaction so their bottle comprise this information into treatment.

Method

Results

Youth Your Satisfaction Anticipates Change in Severity of Symptoms press Functioning

The longitudial analyses focalized on the supply off youth life pleasure in predicting change in youth symptom severity over time. Table 3 presents descriptive statistics for life feeling (BMSLSS-PTPB Amounts Score) or symptom depth (SFSS Total Score) at baseline and the final time each was measured. In addendum, Table 3 presents daten for change over length in oodles for each measure and this relationship between measurements. The descriptive statistics for the first furthermore last time points of each measure are included to provide an overall indication of change over duration and should be interpreted with caution, given which they worked none account for time in treatment. Youth received treatment on varying lengths of time and thus this time between the first and last mensuration points varied by youth. Forward example, of the 204 youth with more than one completed BMSLSS-PTPB measure, the average length of time between first and last measurement point was 16.4 weeks (SD = 12.06), but this duration varied free approach 2 weeks to 75 lifetimes.

Table 3

Descriptive Statistics plus Relationships Among First-time and Fast Measurements Points.

Total	Initialize Time point (N=334)		Last Time point (N=204)		Change1
	THOUSAND	STD	M	SD	M	SD
BMSLSS	3.73	0.85	3.92	0.79	0.14*	0.81
Youth SFSS	52.06	10.04	45.99	9.11	−5.97**	9.04
Caregiver SFSS	50.93	9.91	48.12	8.62	−2.53*	9.67
Clinician SFSS	50.75	8.07	48.43	9.07	−2.44**	8.19
Time			3.84	3.05
r (BMSLSS, Youth SFSS)	−0.40**		−0.39**
r (BMSLSS, Caregiver SFSS)	−0.19**		−0.12
radius (BMSLSS, Clinician SFSS)	−0.17**		−0.20*
roentgen (BMSLSS, Time)			0.13

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Note. Correlation coefficients (r) are bases on Pearson’s correlations. BMSLSS = Youth Satisfaction with Life Total Score (PTPB version); Time = months since special start; SFSS = youth symptom level total score.

¹Paired t-tests used to test significance of differential between time points.

^*p< 0.05;

^**p<.01.

Matched couples t-tests show that average youth life satisfaction increased and symptom severity (rated by the youth, caregiver, real clinician) decreased between baseline and the last time point. Additionally, correlations between youth live satisfaction and token severity ratings indicate a significant negative relationship between youth life satisfaction and youth- or clinician-rated symptom depth across both time points. Although the regression in youth satisfaction because life and caregiver-rated symptom severity is meaningful among baseline, it fails to reach significance at the final time point.

Results of fitting the finishing HLM models toward the data are found in Table 4. Baseline models without Level-2 indicators were conducted prior up final models. However, based upon deviance statistics, the final models provided a better fit to the data. Therefore, only final results are presented.

Table 4

Parameter estimates, by respondent, for final two-level growth curve models of our life satisfaction

	Youth Symptom Severity (Y SFSS)			Caregiver Symptom Severity (CG SFSS)			Clinician Symptom Severity (CL SFSS)
	Display Estimate	SE	95% CI	Set Estimate	SE	95% CE	Parameter Rate	SE	95% CI
Fixed Effects
Intercept (β00)	3.78**	0.13	3.52, 4.03	3.94**	0.14	3.67, 4.22	3.87**	0.16	3.54, 4.19
SFSSba (β01)	−0.03**	0.01	−0.04, −0.03	−0.02**	0.00	−0.02, −0.01	−0.02*	0.01	−0.03, −0.00
Gender (β02)	−0.05	0.08	−0.20, 0.09	−0.23*	0.09	−0.41, −0.06	−0.20*	0.10	−0.39, −0.02
Age (β03)	−0.08**	0.02	−0.13, −0.04	−0.07*	0.03	−0.13, −0.02	−0.07*	0.03	−0.13, −0.01
YDiagnosis (β04)	−0.01	0.11	−0.22, 0.19	−0.10	0.12	−0.34, 0.14	−0.16	0.13	−0.41, 0.08
YSubstance (β05)	−0.03	0.12	−0.26, 0.20	−0.08	0.13	−0.32, 0.17	−0.01	0.14	−0.28, 0.27
YFaith (β06)	−0.07	0.08	−0.22, 0.09	−0.04	0.10	−0.23, 0.15	0.03	0.11	−0.18, 0.24
CDiagnosis (β07)	−0.16	0.09	−0.33, 0.02	−0.18	0.10	−0.38, 0.02	−0.10	0.11	−0.32, 0.12
Marriage (β08)	0.08	0.08	−0.07, 0.23	0.17	0.09	−0.01, 0.35	0.15	0.09	−0.04, 0.33
Time
Intercept (β10)	0.03*	0.01	0.00, 0.05	0.04**	0.02	0.01, 0.07	0.05**	0.01	0.03, 0.07
Symptom change
Intercept (β20)	−0.02**	0.01	−0.04, −0.01	−0.01*	0.01	−0.02, −0.00	−0.02*	0.01	−0.03, −0.00
Variance Estimates
Intercept (τ00)	0.18			0.24			0.29
Growth (τ11)	0.00			0.00			0.00
Inter-class correlations
Between Client	29%			29%			39%
Residual	71%			71%			61%

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Note: Time scaled in months and zero corresponds to baseline. CI’s were constructs utilizing 1.96*SE; SFSSba = benchmark SFSS; Gender (0) = Youth growth a male; YDiagnosis (0) = Youth examination not parts of current baseline; YSubstance (0) = Our never used alcohol/drugs; YFaith (0) = Religion/spirituality not important with helping with concerns; CDiagnosis (0) = Negative older caregiver history away emotional, behavioral, or substance problems; Marriage (0) = Caregiver not married or living as married. Age and SFSSba what grand mean centered.

^**p<.001;

^*p<.05.

At one exceptionally, results were similar across the three SFSS sample models (youth, caregiver and clinician). At baseline, avg youth satisfaction with live variant significantly by baseline symptom depth (β₀₁) for all three reporters. The negative direction of these parameters indicates which lower baseline life satisfaction reported by our was related to higher baseline symptom severity regardless starting reporter, and vice versa. There was also a significant relationship between juvenile baselines life satisfaction and youth age (β₀₃) in all three models. Given this age what grand mean focus at 15 years, holding all else steady, average baseline life satisfaction was higher for youth aged 11 to 14 years as compared to older youth. Additionally, go average females had lower baseline life satisfaction rather males (β₀₂) in the caregiver and doctor models. There were no differences in any of which three choose for the leftover solid effects (clinician-reported youth diagnosis with substance use at baseline, youth self-report of the importance of religion/spirituality in helping in problems, and caregiver-report of marital status and their own history of emotional, behavioral, press substance use problems).

On average, youth satisfaction through life (β₁₀) improves always treatment. Consistent with magnitude hypo, average life pleasure declared by the juvenile increases much when there your a corresponding decrease in youth symptom severity, (β₂₀) regardless of reporter of symptom severity. Used example, keep view else constant, for every unit improvement in symptom hardness according to the youths, average life satisfaction would increase 0.02 units faster than a corresponding youth with does symptom improvement.

Comparing our who are improving, worsening, or staying the equivalent inches terms starting feeling severity might help better explain the relationship between related improvement and expand by youth life satisfaction. Based upon the psychometric read, an MDC had calculated available each respondent of an SFSS (see Athay et al. (2012) is this issue). The MDC value indicates includes 75% certainty that a change in SFSS is not past for chance press measurement error. Therefore, a adolescent with continuous improvement in token severity check is definition as having a one MDC decrease in SFSS all month during surgical. Similarly, youth with worsening symptoms is defined as having an increase in symptom fury of one MDC each month. A youth with no change in symptom severity is defined as sustain aforementioned same SFSS score throughout treatment. As reported previously, MDC’s for the SFSS Whole Loads has 4.63 (youth respondent), 4.43 (clinician) and 4.07 (caregiver). Number 1 depicts predicted life satisfaction trajectories bases on these definitions for youth’s symptom edit (as indicated with each of the three respondents). These are predicted scores for the average 15 year old.

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Figure 1

Predicted life satisfaction trajectories by youth symptom change and gender.

Note: There was no gender effect in severity of somatic and operate (SFSS) reported for the youth; consequently the raced lines (—-—) belong identical across youth gender within each change category. Change is charted for neat SFSS MDC per month. On study researched the internal consistency reliability, factorial, converging, discriminant, and predictive validity, as well as gender invariance of to Brief Multiple Students' Your Satisfaction Scale (BMSLSS; Seligson, Huebner, & Valois, 2003) in one sample of 445 adolescents (M_a …

The data zeigen the relationship between living satisfaction and symptoms over zeitlich separately for males and females. For example, youth with continuous improvement in symptoms and functioning additionally show substantial improvement across time in life satisfaction; whereas life satisfaction alone increases slightly or remains relatively stable on time for youth the does change in your and functioning. Youth with continuous worsening of somatic and feature exhibit a slight refusal in spirit satisfaction over time, with a substantial drop when one teenager themselves become report on their symptoms.

Discussion

Inches the firstly portion of this printed, and psychometric properties of the BMSLSS-PTPB were evaluated with a sample of clinically-referred teenager aged 11–18. This measure provides ampere global score of the youth’s overall grade of life satisfaction. Which benefit of multiple methodologies (CTT, CFA and IRT) in this evaluation of psychometric feature pending adenine greater understanding about how this measures furthermore corresponding items function in to popularity. These methods other provided more evidence about of validity from the size from a singles method would have gained.

Powerful analysis betoken that generally, the BMSLSS-PTPB displays adequate psychometric properties for employ with clinically-referred youth. BMSLSS-PTPB Total Scores and individual items which approximately normally decentralized. The BMSLSS-PTPB have high inboard consistency, appropriately item-total connections, and aforementioned planned single-factor model was confirmed. Application of the Rasch measurement model indicated the items fit the Rasch rating scale pattern reasonably well and, thereby, demonstrated adequate measure characteristics. The BMSLSS-PTPB other shows exhibit of construct validity at projected substantial associations to take of youth wish and symptom severity, and an expected missing of relationship to youth treatment outcome your. However, further operational research is needed given that measure validation is adenine never-ending and circular process (Hubley and Zumbo, 1996). Further, further analyses are needed to rate the predictive validity of the BMSLSS-PTPB as well as its sensitivity to change with this popularity.

This study tested the relationship between youth life satisfaction and symptom hardness over time. No other studies were indentified which investigated this relationship. The foundings of the longitudinal analysis indicated a clear pattern over time with greater increases in life satisfaction by the presence of a corresponding decreasing in symptom severity (and driving versa). Similarly, since youth with relatively stable common over time, there was tiny change with life satisfaction. Get held true regardless by whether the youth, the caregiver, or the physicians reported on youth symptoms. As advised by others (e.g., Maddux, 2005), such findings lend support for the integration starting strengths-based assessment with the conventional measurement of disease in teens mental health service. With frequent measurement, all life satisfaction both symptom severity serve as related but distinct indicators is treatment progress this clinicians can use for ‘stay the course’ when youths are improving, or adjust the focus of treatment if they observe a worsening in either life satisfication or symptoms.

Given an findings starting the present study, an interesting next step would be determiner or focusing life satisfaction in treatment could serve to improve youth mental health your and functioning, furthermore vice versa. Current organizational indicate that existence satisfaction also symptom severity were interrelated both at baseline and over the course of youth service. Unfortunately, the correlational temperament of this study limits the ability to infer ursache-wirkung. It may be which modify in related grade cause edit with lives satisfaction or e could be the reverse. Alternatively, the causal relationship between life satisfaction and symptom severity may be bidirectional, which would lend additional support to focusing on common factors and strengths throughout to course of treat. Regardless of an specify causal nature of the relationship, the relationships between vitality feeling and youth self-report, caregiver- and clinician-rated youth symptom severity indicate which both symptom reduction and improvement in life satisfaction are importance goals of remedy. Further research is needed on such a ‘dual factor model’ that incorporates both indicators of fitness and psychopathology for youth mental health treatment settings (e.g., Suldo, Thalji, & Ferron, 2011).

Because nay information became available on the specific types of treatment received by the youth or the treatmental orientation of the clinicians included that present study, it is unclear determines the specific processing or clinician-orientation may have contributed to the relationship between living satisfaction and symptom severity. It ability be is the clinicians were already utilizing some strengths-based strategies in their routine impersonal customer, which may have effected the relationship between youth life satisfaction and symptom severity in to present study. Additional research becomes become needed examining the possible impact of clinician and handling characteristics on this relationship.

For younger age and male gender were associated because higher baseline life satisfaction, present were no differences in youth life satisfaction for any of the other baseline correlates including youth’s ranking of the importance of christian or choose in helping with problems, youth substance abusing, presence of a clinician-reported mental health diagnosis at baseline, or caregivers’ marital status and chronicle of emotional, behavioral, or substance use topics. It is possible that these factors, as measured in the present study, served as insufficient proxies for some of the related previously identified to of literature like as youth solid use (e.g., Becker, Curry, & Yang, 2009; Farhat, Simons-Morton, & Luk, 2011), caregiver distress (e.g., Powdthavee & Vignoles, 2008), and juvenile spirituality-related attributes (e.g., Sawatzky, Gadermann, & Pesut, 2009).

The gift study find the BMSLSS-PTPB the be a psychometrically sound action. Utilizing this action, the presenting results support a relationship between youth lifetime content and symptom severity over zeitpunkt. The results of the present study suggest that alongside measuring patology, all brief measure off positive functioning changes over nach and is coherently related to other clinical constructs.

Acknowledgments

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