(PS7-63) Clarifying the Mechanisms of Well-being in a Longitudinal Study: The Role of Personal Values and Psychological Strengths

Abstract Text: Positive mental health research aims to deepen our understanding of the mechanisms involved in increasing and maintaining well-being. Personal values and psychological strengths—particularly their awareness and use (referred to as ‘valued living’ in the case of values)—are strongly linked to well-being, but have been analyzed independently. However, these constructs have been studied independently, and an integrated model remains untested. There is a need for longitudinal studies to examine these relationships over time to develop a comprehensive framework to design interventions aimed at increasing well-being. A sample of 313 individuals (72.5% women; Age: M = 34.00; SD = 14.31) from the Spanish general population filled questionnaires related to valued living (ELS-16; Trompetter et al., 2013), strengths knowledge and strengths use (SKS and SUS, Govindji & Linley, 2007), and well-being (MHC-SF, Keyes, 2008) via an online survey. The participants were asked to fill the assessment on three occasions over four months: Time 1 (baseline), Time 2 (after 2 months), Time 3 (after 4 months). Some nested Cross-Lagged Panel Models (CLPMs) including valued living, strengths knowledge, strengths use, and well-being were tested. The model with fixed autoregressive and cross-lagged effects across waves showed the best fit (χ2 (33) = 109.304, p < .001; CFI = .963, RMSEA = .112 90%CI[.089, .136]; SRMR = .043). Results showed that valued living had a moderate cross-lagged effect on well-being, while well-being had a large effect on valued living and a moderate effect on strengths use. However, the relationship with strengths knowledge was not statistically significant. Findings support the role of valued living as a key mechanism in fostering well-being over time. Additionally, higher well-being was associated with increased strength use. The results indicate that valued living and well-being, as well as valued living and strength use, interact and feed back on each other over time. These results highlight the importance of values-based interventions to enhance well-being and strengths-based interventions to promote valued living, which may indirectly contribute to well-being. Future studies should replicate these analyses with larger and more diverse samples.