Positive education is an emerging area of study aimed at encouraging—without ignoring the negative aspects inherent in all human activity—members of the educational community to flourish and develop their full potential (Jacobs and Renandya, 2019). More specifically, positive education is a discipline that emerges from positive psychology and aims to complement the traditional emphasis on developing academic skills with initiatives to promote well–being and optimal functioning (Seligman et al., 2009). In this line, recent research has shown that the development of personal strengths and resources are potential variables for increasing performance and other desirable outcomes in the high school setting (e.g., Steinmayr et al., 2018; Widlund et al., 2018; Su et al., 2019). In addition, the efficacy of programs aimed at increasing levels of well–being and reducing depressive symptomatology, which favor academic performance, has been confirmed (e.g., Shoshani and Steinmetz, 2013; Shoshani and Slone, 2017; Schoeps et al., 2018).

One of the concepts that has received increasing attention from educational contexts is the so–called flourishing (e.g., De la Fuente et al., 2017; Shoshani and Slone, 2017; Datu, 2018; Garzón–Umerenkova et al., 2018; Datu et al., 2019; Chamizo–Nieto et al., 2021; Holliman et al., 2021). Flourishing is synonymous with a high mental well–being level and reflects positive mental health and positive development (Huppert and So, 2013; Hone et al., 2014). More specifically, flourishing is the combination (in a single construct) of feeling good and functioning effectively in one’s life. The first refers to feel interest in and a commitment to the activities of daily living, self–confidence, and affect, while the second refers to feeling in control of the course of one’s life, having a purpose, and establishing and maintaining positive relationships with others (Ryff and Singer, 1998; Keyes, 2002; Huppert, 2009; Huppert and So, 2013; De la Fuente et al., 2017).

Recent positive education research has shown that flourishing is positively related to desired academic outcomes, such as performance (Datu, 2018), personal resources (Ouweneel et al., 2011), engagement (Datu, 2018), achievement goal orientation (Datu et al., 2019), adaptability and social support (Holliman et al., 2021), positive teacher–student relationships (Chamizo–Nieto et al., 2021), basic psychological needs (Herrera et al., 2021), and passion for learning (Chen et al., 2021). Conversely, it is negatively related to undesired academic outcomes, such as depression and distress (De la Fuente et al., 2017), procrastination (Garzón–Umerenkova et al., 2018), and psychotic experiences (Oh et al., 2021). Together, these studies show that flourishing is a key construct applicable to the high school context and to the aims of positive education. Therefore, flourishing could help understand the processes underlying the optimal functioning of children and adolescents in school contexts.

One of the most widely used instruments to evaluate flourishing is the Flourishing Scale (FS) developed by Diener et al. (2010). This scale is a brief self–reported measurement that assesses the key components of psychosocial well–being: meaning and purpose in life, supportive and rewarding relationships, engaged and interested, contribute to the well–being of others, competency, self–acceptance, optimism, and being respected (Diener et al., 2009). Initial validation studies support FS as a one–factor solution with adequate psychometric properties (see Diener et al., 2010). More recently, additional validation studies have supported its psychometric properties (e.g., Romano et al., 2020; Martín–Carbonell et al., 2021; Tan et al., 2021) and shown its cross–cultural validity (e.g., Brazil—da Fonseca et al., 2015; China—Lin, 2015; France—Villieux et al., 2016; Egypt—Salama–Younes, 2017; India—Singh et al., 2016; New Zealand—Hone et al., 2014; Russia—Didino et al., 2019).

Despite the contribution that the studies have made to flourishing research, more research efforts are needed, specially, in Spanish–speaking South American countries where minimal research was done to assess the psychometric properties of FS (e.g., Colombia—Martín–Carbonell et al., 2021; Peru—Cassaretto and Martínez Uribe, 2017). The present study attempts to fill the gap on the scarcity of flourishing measures by adapting the FS to the Chilean high school context and examining its psychometric properties. We hope to contribute to increasing the scarce research on positive education in South American countries. More specifically, we aim to adapt the FS to the usual conditions of Chilean high school students and provide evidence of its validity following both a within–network and between–network construct validity. The first refers to assessing reliability, factor structure, and gender invariance, while the second refers to assessing the extent to which flourishing is associated with theoretically related constructs. In this line, given that the FS measures (only) the psychosocial components of well–being, the Scale of Positive and Negative Experiences (SPANE) —developed by Diener et al. (2010)— complements this indicator by measuring a range of positive and negative emotions and feelings in a specific time range (for example, during the past 4 weeks). Accordingly, the FS score has shown positive and negative significant relationships with the positive and negative feelings dimensions of the SPANE, respectively. For example, 0.69 and –0.48 (Giuntoli et al., 2017); 0.67 and –0.47 (Howell and Buro, 2015); and 0.58 and –0.42 (Silva and Caetano, 2013).

Based on the arguments presented, we hypothesize the following: The FS adapted to the high school context will demonstrate adequate psychometric properties in a sample of Chilean high school students. Also, we expect positive and negative relationships between FS scores and study–related positive and negative feelings (measured with the SPANE), respectively.

The current study aimed to adapt the FS to the Chilean school context and obtain evidence of its validity to address the lack of measures and facilitate flourishing research in educational settings.

Our results are consistent with previous research in terms of the reliability indices and factor structure of the FS (e.g., Diener et al., 2010; Silva and Caetano, 2013; Howell and Buro, 2015; Villieux et al., 2016; Giuntoli et al., 2017; Checa et al., 2018). Also, gender invariance was demonstrated, leading to the conclusion that flourishing can be measured with the same precision in boys and girls, which is consistent with recent studies (e.g., Romano et al., 2020; Martín–Carbonell et al., 2021; Tan et al., 2021). Furthermore, students who report higher levels of flourishing are more likely to experience study–related positive feelings (e.g., happiness, pleasure, and satisfaction) and less likely to experience study–related negative feelings (e.g., sadness, displeasure, and anger).

The main strength of the present study is the large sample used. However, there are also some limitations that highlighting possible paths for future research. First, we use a convenience sample, and our results should be generalized with caution. Therefore, future research could use a representative and diverse sample to generalize its results to the Chilean high school population. Second, the cross–sectional nature of the design does not allow to prove the temporal stability of the FS. Therefore, future research may include longitudinal designs to analyze their stability and temporal invariance. Third, the use of self–report data may increase the probability of incurring common method variance. Hence, it would be interesting to move toward an external measure of flourishing.

The results suggest that the FS adapted to the Chilean high school context can thus be considered a valid and reliable tool for researchers and practitioners. For researchers, this measure contains only eight items and is, therefore, a short and practical instrument, which offers a broad view of positive and healthy functioning that has been shown to be important for students’ optimal functioning. For practitioners, high schools can take advantage of this measure by including it within their diagnosis and monitoring activities. That is, knowing the state of their student’s flourishing will allow them to design and deploy properly grounded actions to foster their well–being and contribute to the building of a healthy and thriving school community.

The raw data supporting the conclusions of this article will be made available by the authors, without undue reservation.

The studies involving human participants were reviewed and approved by the Comité Ético Científico of the Universidad de Tarapacá (CEC-UTA). Written informed consent to participate in this study was provided by the participants’ legal guardian/next of kin.

All authors contributed equally to the research design and wrote the manuscript.

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

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