Well-being can be understood as an overall state of well-being that combines emotions, relationships, a sense of achievement, and meaningful activities. It is an experience in which a person perceives their life as good and fulfilling. Monitoring mental well-being is particularly important in children – good well-being strengthens motivation to learn, contributes to better school results, helps develop healthy relationships, and acts as a protection against anxiety and depression. If the concept of mental well-being is to be used in research, prevention, and practice, we need tools that can reliably capture how children actually perceive their well-being. A new study testing the Czech version of the Stirling Children’s Well -Being Scale (SCWBS) shows that for children aged 10-12, well-being can be understood as a single, comprehensive phenomenon that is unlikely to be broken down into further components in their perception – and that even if the possible answers in the questionnaire are simplified for faster completion, this does not necessarily lead to poorer measurement.
Stirling Children’s Well-Being Scale (SCWBS)
The SCWBS questionnaire was developed in the United Kingdom and is one of the most widely used tools for measuring mental well-being in children aged 8 to 15. It contains 15 questions that ask, for example, whether the child feels happy, whether they have support from others, or how confident they feel in everyday situations. Three items do not measure mental well-being, but serve to reveal the social desirability of responding.
The Czech team tested SCWBS on a large sample of children
Marek Matouš Bula from the Faculty of Education at Masaryk University, together with our member
Adam Klocek from INPSY/Academy of Sciences and Egle Havrdová (Schola Empirica), verified the Czech version of the questionnaire on a sample of 1,701 children from 4th and 6th grades. They focused on three key questions:
- Is well-being in children one-dimensional, or does it involve several related dimensions, such as a basic division into a positive emotional state and a positive outlook on the future or a sense of meaning in life?
- How reliably do the individual questions work?
- Is there a difference between the five-point and the simpler three-point response scale?
Children perceive well-being as a whole
Analyses using advanced item response theory (IRT) showed that the one-dimensional model works best. This means that children do not understand mental well-being as separate parts (subjective well-being, which reflects the degree of positive and negative affect and overall life satisfaction, and psychological well-being, which includes dimensions such as autonomy, personal growth, positive relationships, meaning in life, and self-acceptance), but rather as a single overall experience. It is possible that younger and middle adolescents do not yet distinguish so much between the individual concepts of mental well-being.
Not all questions work equally well
Most items reliably distinguished between children with higher or lower levels of well-being. The question “I was able to make decisions easily” proved to be weaker. This area is apparently less related to mental well-being at this age, probably because independent decision-making is not yet a common experience for children and there is often no room for it at school.
Three-point scale for younger children, five-point scale for older children
A comparison of the versions showed that younger children (around 10 years old) prefer the simpler three-point scale (“never – sometimes – always”). Older children can handle the five-point version, which better captures the subtle differences in their responses.
SCWBS measures fairly across groups
The analyses further confirmed that the questionnaire works equally well for girls and boys and across grades.
A proven tool helps schools and psychologists
The authors point out that the Czech version of SCWBS has not yet been directly compared with the original English version. Therefore, we cannot be completely certain that the questionnaire works in exactly the same way across languages and cultures. Nevertheless, the results show that the Czech adaptation accurately captures children's well-being and can be reliably used to evaluate prevention programs, identify at-risk groups early on, and target support. For example, the tool was used to evaluate the KiVa anti-bullying prevention program (Klocek et al., 2024). It provides schools and professionals with a tool that is fair, understandable, and adapted to the age of the children – and such tools are the basis for effective prevention and mental health support in schools.
Bula, M. M., Klocek, A., & Havrdová, E. (2025). Is there only one well-being for younger children and preadolescents? The revision of the SCWBS questionnaire with detailed psychometric properties. Journal of Personality Assessment. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1080/00223891.2025.2538554
Klocek, A., Kollerová, L., Havrdová, E., Kotrbová, M., Netík, J., & Pour, M. (2024). Effectiveness of the KiVa anti-bullying program in the Czech Republic: A cluster randomized control trial. Evaluation and Program Planning, 106, 102459. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.evalprogplan.2024.102459
