Four scales measuring mental wellbeing in the Nordic countries: do they tell the same story?

Table 10 Descriptives of meanscores (sumscores divided by number of items) and the single item Cantril’s Ladder by country. Weighted data

	Country	Scale range	Mean	Standard deviation	Cronbach’s alpha	N^a (weighted)
Life satisfaction (Cantril’s ladder)	Denmark		7.39	1.83		5454
	Finland		7.73	1.82		5470
	Iceland		7.45	1.89		5445
	Norway		7.31	1.84		5466
	Sweden		7.20	1.96		5396
	All	0-10	7.41	1.88	---	27 231
WHO Wellbeing Index^b	Denmark		3.12	0.90	0.826	3626
	Finland		3.06	1.02	0.862	5416
	Iceland		3.06	1.02	0.850	5260
	Norway		3.10	0.98	0.826	5424
	Sweden		3.05	1.09	0.843	5400
	All	0-5	3.07	1.01	0.842	25 125
Mental wellbeing (SWEMWBS)^c	Denmark		3.80	0.66	0.883	3463
	Finland		3.47	0.80	0.912	3590
	Iceland		---	---	---	---
	Norway		3.43	0.81	0.902	3565
	Sweden		3.65	0.78	0.891	5354
	All	1-5	3.59	0.78	0.901	15 973
HBSC Health Complaints Scale	Denmark		2.21	0.88	0.843	5441
	Finland		2.33	0.93	0.876	5440
	Iceland		2.52	0.95	0.854	5244
	Norway		2.26	0.87	0.843	5421
	Sweden		2.52	0.90	0.847	5448
	All	1-5	2.37	0.92	0.855	26 994

Correlations between factors:
^aThe sum of number of observations (weighted) across countries may, due to rounding errors, not always add up to the number shown as Total
^bThe WHO Wellbeing Index was not administered to students in the lowest age group (11-year-olds) in Denmark
^cThe SWEMWBS scale was administered to all age groups in Sweden, and to the two oldest age groups in Denmark, Finland, and Norway. The SWEMWBS scale was not used in HBSC Iceland 2022

ISSN: 1477-7525