Original scientific paper
https://doi.org/10.5559/di.00.0.00
Exploring Adolescents' Positive Mental Health and Its Measurement in Croatia
Sanja Tatalović Vorkapić
; University of Rijeka, Faculty of Teacher Education, Rijeka, Croatia
*
Marinka Špodnjak
; University of Rijeka, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, Rijeka, Croatia
Sanja Skočić Mihić
; University of Rijeka, Faculty of Teacher Education, Rijeka, Croatia
* Corresponding author.
Abstract
Analysing mental health among adolescents with valid and
reliable measures presents a vital undertaking in the present
times. Therefore, this study is aimed at exploring mental
health among adolescents using an adapted Croatian
language version of the Mental Health Continuum–Short
Form, MHC-SF (Keyes, 2018). MHC was applied to a sample
of 518 Croatian adolescents. Factor and reliability analyses,
as well as convergent and discriminant validity, were
performed to test the psychometric properties of this scale.
While adolescents reported moderate levels of mental health,
a disparity emerged across domains, with social well-being
significantly lower than emotional and psychological wellbeing.
This pattern reflects the heightened salience of peer
affiliation during adolescence and signals the importance of
supporting social integration in youth mental health
frameworks. Validity analyses confirmed that the best fit was
found for the original three-model and bifactorial model,
with more advantages to the three-factor model. Satisfactory
levels of convergent and discriminant validity and internal
reliability were determined.
Keywords
adolescents; MHC-SF; mental health; psychometric properties
Hrčak ID:
350481
URI
Publication date:
1.9.2026.
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