SHORT HAPPINESS AND AFFECT RESEARCH PROTOCOL (SHARP)

Issues in the measurement of subjective well-being (SWB) include the r elative balance between scale brevity and measurement accuracy. Becaus e accuracy is expected to vary negatively with the length of a scale, the brevity/accuracy trade-off has pragmatic implications for survey r esearch. This article begins by examining minimal psychometric criteri a to evaluate short measures of SWB. These criteria include content va lidity (i.e., four basic categories are cited), criterion validity, in ternal consistency, and test-retest reliability. Several measures freq uently used in large-scale surveys are shown to fail against one or mo re of these criteria. Consequently, a new brief measure was developed and shown to satisfy all the criteria. It is termed the Short Happines s and Affect Research Protocol (SHARP). This measure contains 12-items derived from the Memorial University of Newfoundland Scale of Happine ss (MUNSH), with the content balanced over positive and negative, and short-term (affective) and long-term (dispositional) components. The i nternal consistency, temporal stability, and criterion validity coeffi cients for the SHARP are comparable to those of the MUNSH, which is am ong the most accurate measures of self-reported SWB.