Reliability and Validity of the Oxford Happiness Inventory among Iranians

In order to test the reliability and validity of the Oxford Happiness Inventory (OHI; Argyle, 2001), a sample of 142 Iranian males and 227 Iranian females, age 18-53 (Mean = 25), completed the OHI, the Beck Depre- ssion Inventory (BDI; Beck et al., 1979), and the Eysenk Personality Questionnaire (EPQ, 1999). Test of the internal con- sistency of the OHI revealed that all 29 items were highly correlated with the total score. The Cronbach’s alpha for the inventory was 0.91. The Pearson’s cor- relation coefficient between the OHI and the BDI and Ex- traversion and Neuroticism of EPQ subscales were respe- ctively -0.48, 0.45, and -0.39, confirming their convergent and divergent validity. Factor analysis extracted five fa- ctors including life satisfaction, self-esteem, subjective well-being, self satisfaction, and positive affect, with an eigenvalue of greater than one that could explain 49.7% of the total variance. The Iranian participants’ mean score on the OHI (M = 42.07) differed from that of participants in the Ar- gyle’s study (M = 35.6). The results showed that the OHI is a reliable and valid inventory for measuring happiness among Iranians.