DEVELOPMENT AND PSYCHOMETRIC VALIDATION OF THE JEEVANVIDYA HAPPINESS ANALYZER (JVHA): A MULTIDIMENSIONAL, MOBILE-FIRST SCALE FOR FAMILIAL AND INTERDEPENDENT SOCIETIES

Abstract

Background. Well-being instruments are largely built on Western, individualistic assumptions and under-represent the familial, financial and spiritual dimensions central to interdependent societies of India and other regions like East South Asia, Middle East, Saharan Africa and Latin America. This paper describes the development and preliminary validation of the Jeevanvidya Happiness Analyzer (JVHA), a 47-item, 13-domain questionnaire available on paper and as a mobile web application. The designation ‘JVHA’, formally acknowledges foundational alignment with the Jeevanvidya philosophy propounded by Satguru Shri Wamanrao Pai, from which both the tool and it’s parent doctoral project; ‘Evaluation of Vishwa Prarthana Chanting for Mental Wellbeing in General Population’ originate. Methods. The instrument was built through construct specification, deductive item generation, expert review and cognitive pre-testing. Items are scored 1–4 and expressed as a percentage of the maximum (188). Content validity was assessed by 12 experts (I-CVI, S-CVI/UA, modified kappa), who also rated face and construct validity. The final instrument was then administered once to 100 general-population respondents in Mumbai and Pune for item analysis, internal consistency (Cronbach’s α) and inter-domain correlations. Results. Mean expert-rated relevance was 95.57% (SD 4.48) and clarity 93.77% (SD 5.31); all 12 experts rated face and construct validity ≥3 (mean 3.67 ± 0.49). Twenty-nine of 47 items (61.7%) reached universal agreement (S-CVI/UA = 0.617, below the 0.80 benchmark). In the field sample (N = 100; mean age 40.7 ± 13.6 years), the mean overall score was 68.8% ± 11.0%. Corrected item–total correlations for the 44 items in multi-item domains were 0.44–0.77; overall α was 0.92, and domain α ranged from 0.67 (Spiritual Quotient) to 0.89 (Interpersonal Relationship and Family Members’ Wellbeing). Inter-domain correlations were small to moderate (r = −0.03 to 0.52). Conclusion. The JVHA is a 47-item, 13-domain instrument for assessing well-being in the Indian population and similar interdependent societies by incorporating crucial, familial, financial and spiritual dimensions, with preliminary evidence of content, face and construct validity and high internal consistency (α = 0.92). However, findings from the 100-participant field sample remain preliminary, requiring larger studies to establish test retest reliability, convergent/discriminant validity and confirmatory factor structure.