The Development and Validation of the Comprehensive Inventory of Thriving (CIT) and the Brief Inventory of Thriving (BIT)

In this article we present the development and validation of two new measures of psychological well-being: the Comprehensive Inventory of Thriving (CIT) and the Brief Inventory of Thriving (BIT). These measures were developed with two specific goals in mind: (1) to measure a broad range of psychological well-being constructs and represent a holistic view of positive functioning; and (2) to predict important health outcomes that are useful for researchers and health practitioners. The CIT includes 18 subscales with 54 items in total, covering a broad range of well-being components. The BIT has 10 items in total and can serve as an indicator of psychological well-being and a brief screening tool of mental health. The new measures were evaluated in five samples of a total of 3,191 US participants with diverse demographics. The CIT and BIT had excellent psychometric properties and exhibited convergent validity with existing measures of psychological well-being and discriminant validity with measures of ill-being. Both measures contributed over and above existing measures of psychology well-being in predicting a variety of health outcomes, including self-reported and objective health status, physical functioning, and health behaviors. In addition, we showed the relative importance of thriving compared to ill-being for health outcomes and the benefits of assessing individuals' positive functioning beyond ill-being. Potential uses of the new measures are discussed.