Cross-Cultural Measurements of Psychological Well-Being: The Psychometric Equivalence of Cantonese, Vietnamese, and Laotian Translations of the Affect Balance Scale Gerald M. Devins, PhD, Morton Beiser; MD, Rene Dion, PhD, Luc G. Pelletier; PhD, and R. Gary Edwards, PhD Introduction The pluralistic transformation of North American society directs serious attention to the development and adapta- tion of culturally appropriate survey mea- sures. Although concems about psycho- logical well-being, its determinants, and the ways in which it can be maximized are widespread, the research evidence, to date, has relied almost exclusively on English-language materials and respon- dents. Because Asia has become the single largest source of new immigrants to North America-accounting for 53% of all immigrants to Canada in 19921 and, in the same year, for 38% of all immigrants to the United States2-the need for quality- of-life measures in languages used on that continent is particularly acute. The quality-of-life construct encom- passes extemally ratable dimensions, such as role performance, as well as intemal states, among which psychological well- being is a particularly core dimension.3 Although it is a subject of debate, many investigators agree on the usefulness of assessing well-being as a balance of negative and positive affect. Support for this approach includes many research reports illustrating statistically indepen- dent unipolar measures of positive and negative affect and research findings demonstrating nonoverlapping determi- nants for each of these affective states (see references 4 through 6). The Affect Balance Scale,4 perhaps the single most widely used quality-of-life measure, incor- porates both positive and negative affect into a single index of psychological well-being. The sizable literature adducing the reliability and validity of the Affect Balance Scale as an index of well-being (see references 4 through 7) draws for the most part on studies of English-speaking, primarily Euroamerican populations. Ap- plying the scale to non-English-speaking populations requires not only adequate translation but also tests of reliability and validity. In previous work on "boat people" in Canada,8-"1 we adapted the Affect Balance Scale for use among ethnic Vietnamese, Chinese, and Laotians. In the present paper we describe the process of translating the scale into the languages spoken by these three groups; evaluate the cultural equivalence of the translations with the original English-language ver- sion; and report the psychometric proper- ties of the positive and negative affect subscales of the Affect Balance Scale. Methods Data from two population samples, described in Table 1, provide the basis for the current report. Refugee Sample Between 1979 and 1981, Canada admitted 60 000 Southeast Asian refu- gees, about 5000 of whom came to live in Gerald M. Devins and Morton Beiser are with the Clarke Institute of Psychiatry, University of Toronto, and The Toronto Hospital, Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Rene Dion is with the Clarke Institute of Psychiatry. Luc G. Pelletier is with the Department of Psychology, University of Ot- tawa, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. R. Gary Edwards is with The Gallup Organization, Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Requests for reprints should be sent to Gerald M. Devins, PhD, Culture, Community, and Health Studies, Clarke Institute of Psychia- try, 250 College St, Toronto, Ontario M5T lR8, Canada. Internet correspondence may be directed to gdevins@hrsu.clarke-inst.on.ca. This paper was accepted July 29, 1996. Editor's Note. See related editorial by Neugebauer (p 726) in this issue. May 1997, Vol. 87, No. 5