Healthy students: Adaptation and validation of the instrument from the workplace to the educational field

Abstract

Psychological capital (optimism, resilience, hope and self-efficacy) has been joined by a new dimension in the workplace. This is engagement, a new construct, and a research questionnaire called the healthy employee was created to assess this dimension. In this sense, the present work has the aim of adapting and validating this questionnaire of the healthy employee in the educational field, calling this person a healthy student. In total, 290 students (140 women and 150 men) undertaking different university degrees were recruited for this research. A confirmatory factor analysis was carried out to test the structure of two different models in the workplace, with five and eight dimensions, and to adapt and verify the reliability of the models in the educational setting. The results showed a poor fit for both models, suggesting the elimination of four items in the five-dimensional model and of three items in the eight-dimensional model. In addition, the five-dimensional model indicated discriminant validity, while the eight-dimensional model presented non-compliance between two dimensions. Therefore, this work generates an instrument with adequate psychometric properties in the five-dimensional model in the educational field.