Date of Award
Summer 2021
Document Type
Open Access Dissertation
Department
Psychology
First Advisor
E. Scott Huebner
Abstract
The Brief Measure of Students’ Life Satisfaction Scale (BMSLSS; Seligson, Huebner, & Valois, 2003) is a widely used brief self-report measure of child and adolescent Life Satisfaction (LS). Although acceptable reliability and validity have been demonstrated for the BMSLSS across various youth samples, few cross-cultural comparisons have been performed. Specifically, no studies to date have examined measurement invariance of the BMSLSS across diverse samples of racial groups in the US. The current study explored measurement invariance across Black and White middle school students (N = 1484) from four schools in a southeastern U.S. state through use of multi-group confirmatory factor analysis (MGCFA). Findings provided preliminary support for use of the BMSLSS with Black and White youth, both individually and in comparative research regarding early adolescent LS. Specifically, results supported configural and metric invariance but problems were indicated in the examination of full scalar invariance. Thus, a partial scalar invariance model was identified and demonstrated adequate model fit. Latent mean analyses across the full and partial scalar invariance models indicated that White students reported higher LS scores than Black students. These findings suggest the need for further studies of the generalizability of the findings and the possible determinants of racial differences in the LS of U.S. youth.
Rights
© 2021, Kimberly Gibson Sitter
Recommended Citation
Sitter, K. G.(2021). The BMSLSS: Measurement Invariance and Latent Mean Differences Across Black and White Early Adolescents. (Doctoral dissertation). Retrieved from https://scholarcommons.sc.edu/etd/6514