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BACKGROUND In the last ten years, the South African Personality Inventory (SAPI) has been developed as an indigenous measurement of personality for the multi-cultural environment of South Africa. The aim of the SAPI is to assess personality in an unbiased and equivalent way. For the purpose of this study, we used an 82-item version of the SAPI which measures nine factors (Conscientiousness, Emotional Stability, Extraversion, Facilitating, Integrity, Intellect, Openness, Relationship Harmony and Soft-heartedness). PARTICIPANTS AND PROCEDURE A cross-sectional survey was conducted using the SAPI, the General Health Questionnaire and the Brief Multidimensional Student Life Satisfaction Scale. A purposive sample was drawn from Black and White emerging adults (N = 990). We assessed the relationship between personality aspects and well-being across groups in a multiple group structural equation model (SEM) using the SPSS and AMOS programs. RESULTS Black emerging adults showed evidence of more individualistic-inclined personality features, while the White emerging adults seem to demonstrate more collectivistic features. In terms of health, the White emerging adults experience more life satisfaction than their Black counterparts. Conscientiousness, emotional stability, extraversion, facilitating and openness predict well-being among emerging adults. CONCLUSIONS This study contributes to expanding the nomological network of the SAPI, and it enhances knowledge pertaining to the link between personality and well-being of emerging adults in South Africa. Understanding which factors contribute to poor mental health and lack of life satisfaction may lead to innovation programmes for emerging adults to assist them in dealing with negative health outcomes possibly associated with living in multicultural contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ethnic identity as a social dimension of identity is argued to be developmentally important for psychological well-being. However, the relationships between these constructs are mainly examined in Western contexts, amongst dominant-non-dominant groups. We investigate ethnic identity across the mainstream group of a prototypical Western society (the USA) and several multi-ethnic sub-Saharan African countries (Cameroon, Kenya, South Africa, and Zambia), as well as how it relates to psychological well-being. A total of 1255 university students (61.8% females, Mage = 20.94 years, SD = 2.97) completed a questionnaire with ethnic identity and psychological well-being measures. Results indicated that ethnic identity was most salient in two different South African ethnocultural samples and least salient in a mainstream US sample. These results suggest that groups that are more exposed to ethnic strain in multicultural societies tend to have more salient ethnic identities. Furthermore, the underlying structure in the ethnic identity psychological well-being relationship was similar across groups. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Objective: The Mental Health Continuum‐Short Form (MHC‐SF) is a brief scale measuring positive human functioning. The study aimed to examine the factor structure and to explore the cross‐cultural utility of the MHC‐SF using bifactor models and exploratory structural equation modelling. Method: Using multigroup confirmatory analysis (MGCFA) we examined the measurement invariance of the MHC‐SF in 38 countries (university students, N = 8,066; 61.73% women, mean age 21.55 years). Results: MGCFA supported the cross‐cultural replicability of a bifactor structure and a metric level of invariance between student samples. The average proportion of variance explained by the general factor was high (ECV = .66), suggesting that the three aspects of mental health (emotional, social, and psychological well‐being) can be treated as a single dimension of well‐being. Conclusion: The metric level of invariance offers the possibility of comparing correlates and predictors of positive mental functioning across countries; however, the comparison of the levels of mental health across countries is not possible due to lack of scalar invariance. Our study has preliminary character and could serve as an initial assessment of the structure of the MHC‐SF across different cultural settings. Further studies on general populations are required for extending our findings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]