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‘Mag ik vragen, wat ik u moet vragen?’ : Een onderzoek naar de zwakheden van het Mental Health Continuum Short Form met behulp van het Three-Step Test-Interview

Köhle, Nadine (2010) ‘Mag ik vragen, wat ik u moet vragen?’ : Een onderzoek naar de zwakheden van het Mental Health Continuum Short Form met behulp van het Three-Step Test-Interview.

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Abstract:In the past there were different definitions of mental health. The dominating opinion was that the absence of mental illness is important for an individual´s mental health. Therefore health care focused on treatment and prevention of mental diseases. But in the last years research has shown that mental health includes more than only the absence of mental illness. In 2004, the World Health Organization defined mental health in a positive manner (WHO, 2004). They focused on the presence of psychological, emotional and social well-being. The Mental Health Continuum Short Form (MHC-SF) is used in this bachelor thesis. This is an instrument that is attached to the WHO´s definition and it measures mental health by self report. The reliability of the total scale (0.89) as well as the correlation between the three subscales (subjective, psychological and social well-being) makes the MHC-SF a good instrument (Westerhof & Keyes, 2008). But comments from earlier research revealed that people sometimes had difficulties with the response format and with answering the items of social well-being. This is the reason why it is important to look how people fill in the MHC-SF and how they interpret the different items. In this way it can be checked where the problems of filling in the MHC-SF can occur. To examine this aspect the ‘think aloud’ procedure of the Three- Step- Test- Interview is used in this bachelor thesis. In the first step the respondents filled in the questionnaire and said aloud what they were thinking about at that moment. The interviewer´s task during this step was to observe the respondents. If the interviewer felt not fully informed about the respondent´s reactions he asked in the second step for further explanation. In the third step the respondents got the possibility to talk about their feelings, their criticism and their suggestion for improvement of the MHC-SF (Hak, 2004). Thirty people from Enschede, The Netherlands, participated in this study. They differed from each other as much as possible in sex, age and level of education. Their responses were analyzed via content analysis. The results present that respondents had difficulties with the items about social well-being. They were not sure about the meaning of the Dutch words ‘samenleving’, ‘maatschappij’ and ‘belangrijke bijdrage’. Furthermore, there were some problems with the response format. The respondents had some difficulties in answering the questions by saying how often they had a special feeling during the last month. Based on the results suggestions for improvement for the MHC-SF could be made.
Item Type:Essay (Bachelor)
Faculty:BMS: Behavioural, Management and Social Sciences
Subject:77 psychology
Programme:Psychology BSc (56604)
Link to this item:https://purl.utwente.nl/essays/59879
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