A validation study of the Arabic version of the Warwick-Edinburgh Mental Well-being scale among undergraduate students

Background: The main aim of this study was to assess the validity of the Warwick-Edinburgh Mental Well-being Scale (WEMWBS) and the short version of the Warwick-Edinburgh Mental Well-being Scale (SWEMWBS) and to evaluate the metric properties of both versions by using a sample of undergraduate students from three Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries (Oman, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia). Methods: Six hundred ninety undergraduate students (340 M and 350 F; mean _age = 21.16 ± 2.44) from Oman, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia (N_OM = 238, N_QA = 215, N_SA = 237), voluntarily participated in this cross-section study. All of them responded to the WEMWBS, Basic Psychological Needs Satisfaction Frustration (BPNSFS), and Beck Depression Inventory (BDI-II). The methodology involved utilizing descriptive statistics to understand the data’s characteristics, internal consistency analysis for reliability, correlation analysis for convergent validity, confirmatory factor analysis to validate the scales, and measurement invariance testing to ensure cross-group comparability. Model fit indices were employed to gauge the goodness of fit. Results: The translated Arabic versions of the WEMWBS and SWEMWBS showed good reliability, with Cronbach’s alpha values of 0.867 and 0.772, respectively. The findings of confirmatory factor analysis asserted the one-factor solution to interpret the item variances of the 14-item WEMWBS and 7-item SWEMWBS. The WEMWBS and SWEMWBS also showed significant positive relationships with need satisfaction and negative relationship with need frustration, and depression. Moreover, the SWEMWBS showed partial scalar invariance across genders and countries, while the WEMWBS showed only partial metric invariance across the three countries and partial scalar invariance across genders. Conclusions: Our study highlights the appropriateness of both versions of the Warwick-Edinburgh Mental Well-being Scale (WEMWBS) in assessing the psychological well-being of Arab undergraduate students. The employment of these tools is strongly encouraged for the assessment of mental well-being within a comparable adult population.