Method Effects Associated with Reversed Items in the 29 Items Spanish Version of Ryff’s Well-Being Scales

Abstract

Aim Although they have been frequently used in the literature, there has been much confusion concerning Ryff's Well-being Scales, such as their factor structure and the effects of method due to the use of reversed items. A common practice nowadays is the use of positively worded items and reversed forms, in order to reduce response bias. However, in many different studies have been seen that this practice introduce method effects in the scores, leading to problems of reliability and validity. This work had two goals: first, to verify the factor structure of the 29-item Spanish version of the original Ryff's Well-being Scale in an athlete population, and second, to determine whether the method factor associated with the reversed items shown in previous works appears too in a specific sample like athletes. If that happened, the use of this scale would be questionable. Methods For this purpose, a sample of 402 competition athletes, both professional and non-professional, was used. All the confirmatory factor models found in the literature were tested, using confirmatory factor analysis estimated by means of maximum likelihood with robust corrections. Results The best fits were the substantive models of 5 and 6 factors with one factor associated with negative worded items. The results suggest the unsuitability of the 29-item version, suggesting the use of the 54-item scale and avoiding the use of the reversed items to prevent the effect of method. Conclusions If this scale is used to measure well-being, we will obtain a measure without validity because, in addition to well-being, we would be introducing into the scores something else that comes from the method effect introduced by the use of reversed items. The use of this scale is not recommended to obtain measures of psychological well-being. Neuropsychiatry (London) (2018) 8(4) 740 Review Begoña Espejo difficulties posed by the use of reversed items. The scales of Ryff have been constructed with many reversed items, and many of the papers that study the factorial structure, have also studied the effect of method that these items introduce. The use of positively worded items and reversed forms has been recommended traditionally to reduce response bias, and is a commonly used practice nowadays. Nevertheless, empirical studies of the usefulness and adequacy of this practice have been carried out. An empirical study [21] analyzed the psychometric implications of the use of positive and reversed items in a self-efficacy instrument. A repeated measures design was used, evaluating the participants with positive, reversed, and combined forms of a self-efficacy test. Results showed that, when positive and reversed items are used in the same test, the reliability is flawed and the dimensionality is jeopardized by secondary sources of variance. Furthermore, the variance of the scores is reduced, and the means differ significantly from those in tests in which all items are either positive or reversed, but not combined. These findings show that the use of positive and reversed items in a same test is questionable and no recommended. On the other hand, the studies concerning the structure of the Ryff's scale, both in its Anglo-Saxon adaptations and Spanish validations, are presented in Table 1. As can be seen, all the papers that study the factorial structure of the different versions of Ryff's scales have shown problems. Although the studies with the longer versions of the Ryff scale show acceptable reliability indices, the 14 items per factor version do not show an adequate factor structure. For this reason, it is necessary to study the factor structure of the different versions of the Ryff scales. As the longer version of the Ryff scales (14 items per factor) has not shown good factorial structure and is also too long for its application, shorter versions of this scale have been tested. As can be seen in Table 1, the models in which a method factor associated with the reversed items have been introduced (both for the longer version and for the shorter versions), have always shown better fit.