Assessment, Ahead of Print.
Research on the construct of flourishing spans many fields of study. This study extends previous work by VanderWeele by investigating the measurement of flourishing, focusing on the structure and convergent validity of the Flourish Index (FI) and the Secure Flourish Index (SFI) within a national, multi-site sample of resident physicians. Through exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses (EFAs and CFAs), we assessed whether the FI and the SFI aligned with the theoretical flourishing models that VanderWeele suggested. We examined the convergent validity of both indices by testing whether they exhibited expected correlations with six different scales. The results of factor analyses and scale validation showed that data collected by the FI and the SFI fit the structural model of flourishing proposed by VanderWeele. Although prior studies reliably indicate that CFA results align with VanderWeele’s model, this is a rare study where the EFA results also demonstrated a structure that aligns with his framework. Both scales exhibited strong convergent validity, producing data correlated with all six measures in the predicted directions. Although convergent validity has been previously shown, this study replicated and expanded evidence of the construct validity of data provided by the FI and the SFI.