Applicability and cross-cultural validation of the Chinese version of the Warwick-Edinburgh mental well-being scale in patients with chronic heart failure

BACKGROUND: The mental well-being of patients with chronic heart failure is likely to influence their health-related quality of life and decrease the utilization of public health resources. This study assessed the mental well-being of patients with chronic heart failure and evaluated the reliability and validity of the Warwick-Edinburgh Mental Well-Being Scale. METHODS: We conducted a cross-sectional survey from July 2016 to July 2017 among 191 patients with chronic heart failure, and examined psychometric properties of the Warwick-Edinburgh Mental Well-Being Scale, such as internal consistency, reliability, test-retest reliability, and factorial validity of the Chinese version of the Warwick-Edinburgh Mental Well-Being Scale. RESULTS: One-dimensional construct validity was demonstrated by confirmatory factor analysis. The psychometric properties of the Chinese version of the Warwick-Edinburgh Mental Well-Being Scale were satisfactory in our sample of patients with chronic heart failure. The internal consistency reliability was .948 and the test-retest reliability .925. The item-total correlations ranged from .405 to .872. There was a strong correlation (r = .79) between the Chinese version of the Warwick-Edinburgh Mental Well-Being Scale and the five-item World Health Organization Well-Being Index. The Chinese version of the Warwick-Edinburgh Mental Well-Being Scale appears acceptable for use in patients with chronic heart failure, and we were able to verify its reliability and validity with our sample. CONCLUSIONS: The Chinese version of the Warwick-Edinburgh Mental Well-Being Scale is a reliable quantitative tool for evaluating mental well-being in patients with chronic heart failure in clinical settings, and this has important implications for overall assessments of mental well-being in patients with chronic heart failure. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (10.1186/s12955-019-1120-2) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.