The Professional Counselor | Volume 14, Issue 2 207 suggest that the IWI is particularly well calibrated for measuring IWI among adults in the United States. Accordingly, professional counselors and professionals in related fields can use the IWI as one way to measure the utility of NHA interventions. Practicality of the IWI and Consistency With the Counseling Profession Practicality is a cornerstone of test-worthiness and involves the degree to which a screening tool is logistically feasible for use in clinical practice (Neukrug & Fawcett, 2019). Brief screening tools with validated scores enhance the practicality of screening tools, as they provide practitioners with a quick and feasible method for measuring their clients’ scores on latent variables (Shields et al., 2021). The IWI has potential to be a highly practical screening tool in professional counseling settings, as it is comprised of reasonably few items (13 items in the unidimensional model), which has implications for reducing respondent fatigue. The IWI is also available in the public domain, free to use, and can be scored in minutes. Accordingly, the IWI has potential to be a practical screening tool that professional counselors can use in the intake process to establish baseline IW scores. The brevity and feasibility of the IWI makes it practical for professional counselors to administer the IWI to their clients as one way to monitor their progress in treatment. Consistent with the underlying strengths-based principles of the counseling profession (Long et al., 2022; Myers, 1992), the IWI’s construct of measurement, IW, is a strengths-based latent characteristic (Glasser & Lowenstein, 2016). Accordingly, professional counselors are encouraged to use strengthsbased assessment tools to measure well-being and keep track of treatment effectiveness (Fullen, 2016; Young et al., 2015) rather than focusing solely on measures of symptomatic distress or psychopathology. NHA and IW emphasize empowerment, strength, and resilience. The IWI is a strengths-based screening tool for measuring a growing, accruing, and deepening sense of inner enrichment (Bennett et al., 2023). Considering the promising psychometric support for the unidimensional IWI model in the present study, practitioners can use the IWI to measure IW when working with adults in the United States. In addition, the current results revealed strong correlations between IWI and MHI-5, which further supports that IW is a form of mental wellness. Inner Wealth, Anxiety, and Depression Anxiety and depression are the two most common mental health conditions among adults living in the United States (NAMI, 2022). The PHQ-9 and GAD-7 are screening tools with rigorously validated scores for measuring depression and anxiety severity with normative samples of adults in the United States (e.g., J. S. Patel et al., 2019). Accordingly, the results of convergent validity testing between the IWI and the GAD-7 and PHQ-9 in the present study support the IWI’s psychometric properties and have implications for counselors who are working with U.S. adults living with anxiety or depression. Specifically, the IWI’s strong correlations with the PHQ-9 and GAD-7 suggest that the IWI might have utility for tracking treatment outcomes related to potential protective factors against depression and anxiety. Future research is needed; however, the results of the present study tentatively suggest that higher levels of IW might have utility for predicting lower levels of anxiety and depression among U.S. adults. To this end, it might be helpful for professional counselors to include the IWI in assessment batteries for clients who are living with anxiety and depression. Treatment plan goals can reflect both aiming to reduce negative symptoms (anxiety or depression) and increase wellness-based symptoms (e.g., IW). In addition, counselors and their clients can refer to the content of IWI items as semistructured discussion prompts. Suppose, for example, that a client scores high on the following IWI item: “When I receive a compliment, I think it is likely untrue.” The client and counselor can use this information to discuss how and in what ways the client can work on giving themselves credit when they receive a compliment.
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