Wellness Inventory by Rutgers Researchers Receives Empirically Valid ‘Gold Star’

The stamp of approval will make it easier for health care providers and support workers to use the assessment tool in their treatment planning

Margaret "Peggy" Swarbrick has spent her career helping people help themselves.

In 1997, she developed the Wellness Model to help people she was working with think about their health in a holistic way. Today, Swarbrick's model is a bulwark of behavioral health care and has been adopted by colleges and universities, corporations, health care services and government agencies. The Wellness Model is also a framework for Rutgers ScarletWell, a pioneering exemplar of university-wide wellness programming that is inclusive, holistic and multidisciplinary, with Swarbrick serving as its director.

Swarbrick's associated Wellness Inventory, a free online tool to assess individual wellness across eight dimensions (physical, spiritual, intellectual, social, occupational, financial, emotional and environmental), has received a professional stamp of approval.

Writing in the journal Psychiatric Services, researchers at the Rutgers Center of Alcohol and Substance Use Studies and Rutgers School of Health Professionsdetermined that "the Wellness Inventory is a comprehensive and psychometrically valid tool for assessing wellness," a finding that will make it easier for healthcare providers and support workers to use the assessment tool in their work.

Swarbrick, a professor at the Graduate School of Applied and Professional Psychology, discusses the validation process and how a validated inventory might revolutionize wellness planning.

How do you define wellness?

Wellness is not the absence of disease, illness or stress but the presence of purpose in life, active involvement in satisfying work and play, joyful relationships, a healthy body and living environment, and the presence of happiness. There is no optimal level of wellness. Wellness is self-defined and actualized in our day-to-day habits and routines.

What is the Wellness Inventory? Can you describe it?

The Wellness Inventory outlines items that individuals can reflect on to explore their strengths and needs prior to setting a meaningful wellness goal and creating a personalized wellness plan. The 54-item checklist is based on reported habits and routines used by people with mental health, substance use and trauma-related challenges that support recovery, though can be used by anyone interested in taking action to enhance their wellness.

The inventory is based on something called the Wellness Model, an approach to understanding individual wellness across eight dimensions of wellness. The model was initially developed personally to manage some early life challenges and eventually became a framework in my work as an occupational therapist to empower people to clarify their own wellness needs and strengths and to identify areas they want to enhance or improve.

How has the Wellness Model been received?

The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, endorsed the Wellness Model in its effort to promote holistic, strength-based wellness.

Since then, federal government agencies - such as the National Park Service - have used the model to develop employee wellness programs and schools, including Seton Hall University and the University of New Hampshire, have joined Rutgers in using the eight dimensions of wellness in their programming. Even the Costco Wholesale Corp. shared the eight dimensions of wellness with its members in its January 2023 newsletter.

The new year offers a great time to for people to take their wellness 'pulse' to continue building the wellness habits that are strong, and to consider areas to strengthen.

Why did you want to validate the Wellness Inventory?

Our goal was to establish an empirically valid wellness tool to be used in academic, clinical, vocational and research settings. I've used the Wellness Inventory for years in my classroom because it's a good way to help students visualize where they are in terms of wellness. But the inventory is more than an educational tool. Having these psychometric test results gives the inventory a gold star that others who want to use it, especially clinicians and researchers, can have confidence in.

How was the inventory validated?

We distributed the Wellness Inventory via e-mail to nearly 3,500 university students, staff, faculty and behavioral health care providers. Using statistical analyses models applied to data from three independent samples, we found that the Wellness Inventory is a powerful tool for assessing, measuring and tracking overall wellness across the eight dimensions.

Many people have reported that the inventory is personally useful and provides information they can share with their doctors for treatment planning as well as help them in setting goals for self-improvement. This validation is a statistical measure to those anecdotal observations.

What makes the Wellness Inventory unique?

In behavioral health interventions, clinicians often look to treat signs and symptoms, which are inherently negative. The Wellness Inventory, on the other hand, helps people see the positive features of wellness and to think about treatment planning around strengths, not weaknesses. The inventory can help them identify these areas of strengths that are often overlooked.

Using the Wellness Inventory, we're able to explore current wellness activities, habits and routines within each of the eight dimensions. This process serves to bolster self-efficacy and lays the foundation for recognizing strengths by acknowledging the things we are already doing in our day-to-day routines.

What's next for the inventory?

We're building an app. I've always wanted to do that but decided to focus first on validating the wellness inventory. We're also working to make the inventory more widely available in various formats and languages to benefit as many people as possible.

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