Mental toughness (MT) has been shown to predict outcomes across a variety of high-stress contexts such as athletics, the military, and the workplace. Despite this, researchers have struggled to reach consensus regarding how best to conceptualize and measure MT. Specifically, MT assessments have focused on measuring general MT rather than domain-specific MT. The current study proposes a measurement model of MT grounded in social-cognitive theory and introduced an assessment of MT within a situational judgment test framework to assess MT in the workplace. Participants completed a battery consisting of the new measure as well as measures intended to establish construct validity. Factor analyses suggested a three-factor solution fit the data best. Furthermore, cross-structure analyses indicated that the new assessment avoided common-method bias in responding, as evident by weak correlations with measures of other constructs. / Master of Science / Mental toughness (MT) has been shown to be a resource that buffers against the negative effects of distress and predicts outcomes across a variety of settings, including the workplace. However, widely used self-report MT questionnaires have numerous issues, such as a lack of context. The current study addressed a number of these issues by creating a measure of MT wherein respondents were given a workplace situation and asked the likelihood that they would respond in a variety of manners, thereby assessing MT as relevant to the workplace context. Three factors of MT were most prominent – task persistence, emotional control, and utilization of feedback. The measure introduced in the current study had small associations with existing self-report measures of MT, personality, and distress, suggesting that the new method of measuring MT avoided some issues inherent to self-report responding. This research laid promising groundwork for the future assessment of MT in the workplace.

The purpose of this thesis was to investigate the psychometric properties of three global user subjective measures of the ”The Quality Star” clinical review model: Consumer Satisfaction Scale, Global Quality of Life scale, and Perceived Global Distress scale. The mental health implementation context of this review model emphasizes the client as an agent of change, taking part in shared decision making in an empowered role as collaborative partner to the professional clinicians. In Paper I study the patient self-rating Consumer Satisfaction Scale gave results comparable to those obtained by independent interviewer assessors. Out of cost-effective perspective professional time is saved and logistics simplified. In Paper II the visual analogue self-rating Global Quality of Life scale was shown to have satisfactory test-retest reliability, and concurrent validity with the “Life as a whole” item of Manchester Short Assessment of Quality of Life (MANSA). The patients’ conceptualizations of the scale based on associative findings with a number of validating instruments were consistent with expected areas of concern for Serious Mentally Ill persons. Similarly, in Paper III the visual analogue scale the Perceived Global Distress scale, showed acceptable clinical test-retest reliability, and concurrent validity with the MANSA item, “How satisfied are you with your mental health”. In associative analyses it was found that depressive, anxiety, interpersonal and existential elements contributed to the patient´s conceptualization of the construct. In Paper IV, a previous finding suggesting that women were more satisfied with the health care and had better social functioning compared to men was further elaborated investigating the discriminative properties of the subjective instruments. In the multi-centre cohort of 2552 patients it was possible to detect differences between genders and functional levels professionally assessed with the split version of Global Assessment of Functioning rating scale. The General discussion underlines that although subjective measures tend to have strong interrelations, supporting earlier findings, one has to use multiple measures for an optimal management of mental illness as the subjective outcome ratings have to be individually interpreted in a feed-back dialogue with the patient and be compared to observational assessments.

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