Cross-Cultural Examination of the Community Reinforcement Approach Happiness Scale (CRA-HS): Testing measurement invariance in five countries

Abstract

The Community Reinforcement Approach Happiness Scale (CRA-HS) is widely used for assessing the quality of life in addiction treatment, but the amount of research on the psychometric properties has been scant. The present study sought to (a) test for measurement invariance of the CRA-HS across college students (n = 3388) in five countries (i.e., United States, Spain, Argentina, Uruguay, and the Netherlands); (b) evaluate differences on the CRA-HS (i.e., latent mean differences) as a function of sex and country, and (c) compare criterion-related validity. Using multi-group confirmatory factor analyses, we found a shortened 10-item version of the CRA-HS to be invariant across sex, but only configural and metric invariance was found across countries. Across all countries, criterion-related validity of the CRA-HS scores across different countries emerged. Our findings serve as a foundation for future cross-cultural work testing models in which subjective well-being (i.e., happiness) is an important clinical/routine outcome among college students.