Rasch and Confirmatory Factor Analysis of the Community Wellbeing Index: A Multicountry Validation Study

Community wellbeing assessment is of growing interest in governance and policy-making. This study investigated the validity and reliability of the Community Wellbeing Index (CWI), assessing community wellbeing from an individual’s perspective, across independent international datasets. The CWI was translated from the original Spanish into English and Setswana and was administered to participants from established research cohorts in Spain (n = 1,106), Australia (n = 677) and South Africa (n = 400). The CWI was validated within countries using the Rasch model and confirmatory factor analysis. Differential Item Functioning (DIF) by country and Multigroup Confirmatory Factor Analysis was used to evaluate invariance across the samples. Results indicated a three-dimensional construct, good fit of the data to the model, item local independence, PSI ranging 0.668–0.752, and an absence of DIF by sex, age and country. Configural and metric invariance among the three countries were supported, but not scalar invariance, implying that scale and subscale scores could not be compared across the samples. This could potentially be attributed to sample differences on demographic factors including age, urbanicity and socio-economic status. In conclusion, the CWI performed robustly across geographic, cultural, and linguistic settings, indicating the scale can be used in diverse settings. Continued investigation of the CWI across place and culture is warranted, particularly research using samples more closely matched on demographic factors to explore whether the measure can be used to compare community wellbeing levels across countries.