Objective: It is aimed to examine the psychometric properties of the Turkish form of the Oxford Happiness Questionnaire (OHQ) in this study.
Method: The participants of the study are constituted by 491 university students studying in Sakarya University Education Faculty in 2011-2012 education year. All of the participants were subjected to the Oxford Happiness Questionnaire (OHQ) and randomly selected 173 participants were subjected to the Satisfaction with Life Scale (SWLS), Life Orientation Test (LOT), Positive-Negative Affect Scale (PANAS) and Subjective Happiness Scale (SHS) besides (OHQ). Firstly, linguistic equivalence of the scale was examined. After ensuring the linguistic equivalence, exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis methods were used to examine the structural validity of OHQ and for criterion related validity, the correlations of OHQ with other measuring methods used within the study were checked. The reliability of OHQ was examined with composite reliability, internal consistency and split-half methods.
Findings: According to exploratory factor analysis results, a structure whose eigen value was 8.3 and which explained 29.84% of total variance was obtained. It was seen that the factor loads of the scale varied between 0.32 and 0.77. The findings obtained as a result of confirmatory factor analysis indicated that the one-factor structure of the scale was retained in the sample comprising Turkish university students. As a result of the analysis for criterion related validity, significant relations were found between OHQ and other measuring means evaluating happiness and optimism. In structural reliability analysis, Cronbach alpha internal consistency coefficient of OHQ was found 0.91 and reliability coefficient obtained with test half-life method was found 0.86 and composite reliability of the scale was found 0.91.
Conclusion: The findings obtained in this study indicate that Turkish form of OHQ has a one-factor structure and this form can be used as a valid and reliable measuring means in evaluating happiness in university students.
Key words: Happiness scale, validity, reliability
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