The Flourishing Scale Holds Up Outside the US (Silva & Caetano, 2013)

The Question

Does the Flourishing Scale work outside the US college samples it was built on, once it is translated and given to working adults?

What They Found

• In a Portuguese sample, the eight-item Flourishing Scale reproduced the same single-factor structure Diener reported in 2010, with no item dropping out under translation
• Internal reliability was Cronbach's alpha of 0.83, consistent with the 0.87 reported in the original US validation
• The Portuguese Flourishing Scale correlated strongly with the SWLS and with the SPANE positive-affect subscale, replicating the convergent-validity pattern from the US data
• Adult mean scores landed close to the original US college mean, evidence that the international anchor of around 45 out of 56generalises beyond student populations

How They Tested It

• Recruited a Portuguese sample of working-age adults and ran the translated Flourishing Scale alongside the SPANE and the SWLS in a single online survey
• Used confirmatory factor analysis to test whether Diener's one-factor model fit the Portuguese data
• Compared internal reliability and convergent-validity correlations against the values Diener et al. (2010) reported in the US validation paper

Caveats

• Single-country, single-language replication; broader claims about cross-cultural generalisability rest on the cumulative evidence from many such validations rather than on this paper alone
• The sample skewed urban and educated, so working-class and rural Portuguese populations were underrepresented in the validation data
• Like every wellbeing instrument here, it is a self-report measure, vulnerable to social-desirability pressure on items about being a good person and contributing to others