Child Flourishing Index: Confirmatory Factor Analysis and Measurement Invariance Between Youth of Color and White Youth in the United States

Mental health researchers increasingly study the presence of positive mental health, that is, “flourishing,” beyond the absence of mental illness. This study examined the psychometric properties of the Child Flourishing Index (CFI) in the National Survey of Children’s Health (NSCH) ( N = 17,539; 23% youth of color, 77% white youth, aged 12–17). A one-dimensional model with five items (curiosity, resilience, following through) showed excellent fit (CFI = 1.0, Tucker–Lewis index [TLI] = 0.999, root mean square error of approximation [RMSEA] = 0.027, standardized root mean square residual [SRMR] = 0.011). Excluding one resilience item, configural, metric, and scalar analyses indicated measurement equivalence across youth of color and white youth. Future research should expand on these findings to explore flourishing indicators among youth from diverse cultural and racial backgrounds.