There is growing concern about university student mental health, yet research has focused predominantly on psychological distress, with less attention to positive well-being. This imbalance is particularly consequential in Vietnam, where evidence on the psychometric performance of the World Health Organization Five Well-Being Index (WHO-5) in undergraduate populations remains limited. The present study evaluated the WHO-5 in 655 Vietnamese undergraduate students (Mage = 19.70, SD = 1.36; 81.4% female), focusing on its unidimensional structure and measurement invariance across substantively important student subgroups. Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) supported a one-factor model (CFI = .984, RMSEA = .079, SRMR = .016), and score reliability was excellent (ω = .944). Multigroup CFA further supported configural, metric, and scalar invariance across gender, academic major, and area of origin. Convergent validity was supported by a large negative association with psychological distress measured by the GHQ-12 (r = −.58, p < .001). These findings extend available evidence on the WHO-5 by demonstrating score comparability across academic major and area of origin, two subgrouping variables that have rarely been examined in prior validation research. Overall, the WHO-5 appears to be a reliable and valid instrument for assessing subjective well-being among Vietnamese university students.
Tran et al. (Thu,) studied this question.