Abstract:

To examine the reliability and validity of the Chinese Version of Ryff’s Scale of Psychological Well-being (C-PWBS-42) in people with disabilities. Meanwhile, to explore demographic factors that affect the psychological well-being of the disabled. C-PWBS-42 and the revised C-PWBS-16 were administered to two valid sample (n1 = 352, n2 = 513) through Disabled Persons’Federation channels, respectively. Other 40 disabled persons were retested after an interval of 4 weeks. We found that the revised version of C-PWBS-42 include 16 items (C-PWBS-16), consisting of four factors, namely, environmental mastery, life growth, positive mind, and autonomy. C-PWBS-16 demonstrated satisfactory coefficients for construct, convergent, discriminant and criterion validity. Internal consistency reliability of total scale and four factors ranged from 0.71~0.91, and test-retest reliability ranged from 0.76~0.93. The demographic differences in psychological well-being of the disabled are as follows: women are higher than men, congenital disabilities are higher than acquired disabilities, and severe disabilities are higher than mild disabilities; the higher the level of education, the higher the psychological well-being; people with physical disabilities have the lowest psychological well-being. All in all, the revised C-PWBS-16 is reliable, valid, and suitable for measuring psychological well-being of people with disabilities. Gender, congenital/acquired disability, disability level, disability type and education level are important factors influencing psychological well-being of the disabled.

Key words: psychological Well-being, Scale of Psychological Well-being, people with disabilities