208 The Professional Counselor | Volume 14, Issue 2 Two-Dimensional IWI Model At this stage of development, we recommend that clinicians and researchers use the two-dimensional IWI tentatively, if at all, to measure IW among U.S. adults due to the questionable-to-poor validity evidence of scores that we found for this model. Future researchers or practitioners who are seeking to use the two-dimensional model with adults in the United States should test for reliability and validity evidence of IWI scores with their sample before interpreting the meaning of scores. Limitations and Future Research The findings of this study present limitations and implications for future research. We hired a data collection contracting company to employ a rigorous data collection procedure to recruit a national sample of U.S. adults stratified by the census data (U.S. Census Bureau, 2022). However, the statistical aggregation procedure that we used to dummy code variables into subsamples that were substantial enough for invariance testing may have limited the external validity of the findings. In particular, the results might not have detected differences in the meaning of IW among U.S. adults with (a) gender identities besides female or male, (b) ethnoracial identities beyond White or non-White, and/or (c) levels of education that were more specific than having a college degree or not. To these ends, we recommend that future investigators examine the factorial invariance of IWI scores with more ethnoracially, educationally, and gender-diverse samples. In addition, future researchers can extend the existing line of research on the IWI by testing for temporal internal structure validity via a time series factor analysis. Results might reveal insights into the time series psychometric properties of the IWI. The results of convergent validity testing revealed strong co-variation (i.e., both statistical and practical significance) between IWI scores of a sample of U.S. adults and their depression and anxiety severity scores. However, causal directionality between variables cannot be inferred from the results of any cross-sectional study. Accordingly, future outcome research on the potential utility of IW in a possible treatment for anxiety and depressive disorders is recommended. For example, future researchers can test for changes in anxiety and depression severity before and after the NHA training (Glasser & Lowenstein, 2016), which is geared toward increasing IW. In addition, the results of the present study are based on a non-clinical sample of adults in the United States. There might be utility in future researchers testing the psychometric properties of the IWI with samples of participants who are living with mental and/or physical health conditions. Summary and Conclusion Consistent with the wellness orientation of the counseling profession, IW is a strengths-based construct that emphasizes internal enrichment and empowerment (Glasser & Lowenstein, 2016). The IWI is a screening tool for appraising IW, which was normed with two large samples of child welfare professionals (Bennett et al., 2023). The purpose of the present study was to extend the generalizability of IWI scores to a normative national sample of U.S. adults (stratified by the U.S. Census Bureau [2022] data for gender identity, age, ethnoracial identity, and geographic location). We found support for the psychometric properties of the unidimensional IWI model but not the two-dimensional IWI model with U.S. adults. Specifically, the results of factorial invariance (MCFA) and convergent validity testing evidenced strong support for the psychometric equivalence in the meaning of IW across gender, ethnoracial identity, help-seeking history, education, and income for U.S. adults’ scores on the unidimensional IWI model. When working with adults in the United States, professional counselors can use the unidimensional IWI as one way to measure and track their clients’ IW throughout treatment. The IWI offers a number of practical advantages to professional counselors, including brevity, simple scoring instructions, and free availability in the public domain.
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