Abstract
Studying happiness psychometrically is recent, and the few available instruments are English rooted. Happiness is a concept that hasn’t reached to an agreement yet, typically measured as unidimensional, through a few direct items, and usually not specifying what constitutes it. In study 1, and based on a pentadimensional and emic concept of happiness, a 100 items scale was built to measure it among Chilean adults. It was applied to different samples (n=68; n=277) and refined through exploratory factor analysis, giving origin to the Happiness Scale for Adults (EFPA) -composed by 21 items- with good reliability and validity, distributed among four dimensions: psychological state, having family, achievement orientation and optimism. In study 2, the EFPA crossed validity was carried out with a new sample of adults (n=341), and through parallel analysis and structural equation modelling various models were tested, being confirmed one of 4 and other of 3 dimensions, keeping the later: state, having family and achievement orientation.
