Adolescents’ mental health in school setting: trans-cultural validation of an Italian version of the School Well-Being Scale

BACKGROUND. Mental health is one of the leading health concerns for adolescents in Europe (morbidity rate 25%). In the framework of Health Promoting School (HPS) it is a major dimension, but a recent Cochrane review (2015) didn’t detect it among significant outcomes of HPS. School wellbeing is clearly part of mental health and several scales have been proposed for measurement. METHODS. In 2010, 16 high schools were enrolled in Abruzzo region (Middle Italy) and 476 students (aged 16.8 ± 0.9 ys; 53.3 % females) filled in an Italian version of the Konu & Rimpela’s School Well-Being Scale, drawn up by means of translation-back translation method. Four Likert’s scales assess the domains concerning school experience/health: School Conditions, Social Relationships, Means of self-fulfillment, Health Status. A validation analysis has been performed about : 1) the scales’ internal consistency (Cronbach’s Alpha) and 2) the equivalence of the factor structure with the original version (Confirmatory Factor Analysis, CFA). RESULTS. The Cronbach’s alfa resulted always ‘acceptable’ (>0.70) except than for the Social Relationship domain (0.661). Moreover, the CFA highlighted an acceptable goodness-of-fit with the theoretical structure both for the four separate scales and for the entire model: the GFI and AGFI indices are good (>0.90) in 8 comparisons out 10. The RMR index, even below 0.05 only in one domain, is little, so the residual correlation between items unexplained by the model is low. CONCLUSIONS. The Italian version of questionnaire is adherent to the theoretical model used by Konu and Rimpela. Therefore, it will be used to evaluate the impact of HPS network’s implementation at local level, in the context of Abruzzo’s Regional Prevention Plan 2015-2018. MAIN MESSAGES. 1) Adolescents’ mental health is a priority in public health. 2) It’s desirable to standardize a European surveillance system on school wellbeing consistent with HPS’s model based on validated tools.