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Background: An increasing number of international organisations and national governments have committed to well-being promotion. Unfortunately, important questions regarding how to assess well-being are still unresolved, making policy implementation and evaluation difficult., Methods: This research expanded on Huppert and So's (Soc Indic Res. 110, 837-861 2013) multidimensional subjective well-being framework by investigating the replicability of the model in two non-European regions (South America, represented by Brazil and Colombia, and Eastern Africa, represented by Uganda), and the United Kingdom. Additionally, previous limitations of the framework were also addressed. ESS Round Six items were crucially improved in terms of temporal and response scale consistency. Bayesian approximate measurement invariance was applied on a sample of 381 young adult participants to test for consistency across countries., Results: The Huppert & So (Soc Indic Res. 110, 837-861 2013) model was found to fairly replicate across non-European regions, where meaningful differences in well-being patterns across regions were observed. Additionally, estimated well-being was related with other well-being measures (Five Ways): Learn and Connect were the strongest predictors of general well-being, with Take Notice and Give being associated with specific aspects of it., Conclusions: Based on this narrow sample of young adults, it appears the ten-item measure proposed by Huppert & So (Soc Indic Res. 110, 837-861 2013) is useful for assessing population mental health outside of Europe. This is only an initial attempt to assess qualities, so further testing should be done before applying at scale for identifying policy opportunities to address well-being of populations.

Background: Recent trends on measurement of well-being have elevated the scientific standards and rigor associated with approaches for national and international comparisons of well-being. One major theme in this has been the shift toward multidimensional approaches over reliance on traditional metrics such as single measures (e.g. happiness, life satisfaction) or economic proxies (e.g. GDP)., Methods: To produce a cohesive, multidimensional measure of well-being useful for providing meaningful insights for policy, we use data from 2006 and 2012 from the European Social Survey (ESS) to analyze well-being for 21 countries, involving approximately 40,000 individuals for each year. We refer collectively to the items used in the survey as multidimensional psychological well-being (MPWB)., Results: The ten dimensions assessed are used to compute a single value standardized to the population, which supports broad assessment and comparison. It also increases the possibility of exploring individual dimensions of well-being useful for targeting interventions. Insights demonstrate what may be masked when limiting to single dimensions, which can create a failure to identify levers for policy interventions., Conclusions: We conclude that both the composite score and individual dimensions from this approach constitute valuable levels of analyses for exploring appropriate policies to protect and improve well-being.