The PERMAH Wellbeing Evaluation is grounded in two decades of empirical research on positive psychology, applied psychometrics and the measurement of human flourishing. Every question, every score and every comparator on this platform traces back to a published, peer-reviewed body of work.
This page summarises the scientific foundations of the framework, the validation work behind the evaluation instrument, and the ongoing research that continues to evolve our framework for use in workplaces, schools and communities worldwide.
Developed by Dr. Martin E.P. Seligman at the Penn Positive Psychology Center, PERMA proposes that human flourishing is supported by five measurable elements: Positive Emotion, Engagement, Relationships, Meaning and Accomplishment.
PERMA shifted the field from a deficit-based view of wellbeing (the absence of distress) to a strengths-based one: flourishing has positive properties that can be measured, supported and grown.
Why It Matters
Each PERMA element predicts independent variance in life satisfaction and is responsive to evidence-based intervention, making the model both a measurement framework and a practical map for change.
From PERMA to PERMAH
Subsequent research demonstrated that physical Health (sleep, movement, vitality) is an integral pillar of flourishing as well as a correlate of it. Adding the +H to PERMA produced PERMAH: a six-element model that captures the body as well as the mind.
The PERMAH Wellbeing Evaluation was conceived by Dr. Michelle McQuaid and developed in partnership with Professor Peggy Kern (University of Melbourne) and original contributor Martin Suchta to translate PERMAH into a validated, applied measurement instrument.
What We Measure
The evaluation scores each element on a 0–100 scale, lets respondents see themselves against population norms, and surfaces the amplifiers (ability, motivation and psychological safety) that turn intent into behaviour.
Psychometric Foundations
Each PERMAH item passed through iterative scale-development work led by Professor Peggy Kern: factor structure, internal consistency, test–retest reliability, and convergent / discriminant validity against established measures of life satisfaction, depression, anxiety and engagement.
Scoring is normalised across populations and across editions so a respondent in a healthcare team in Melbourne is comparable to a respondent in a manufacturing team in Glasgow.
Key Properties
Multi-element factor structure validated in working adults, students and clinical samples
Reliable population norms across age, role and tenure cohorts
Sensitivity to change: scores shift in response to genuine intervention, not only to repeat exposure
Workplace Applications
Workforce datasets from organisations across healthcare, education, professional services, manufacturing and the public sector show consistent links between PERMAH scores and the outcomes leaders care about: engagement, retention, psychological safety, sick leave, and team performance.
Population averages, role-band breakdowns and time-series trends are continuously refreshed so the comparators on every dashboard reflect the current state of the field rather than a frozen snapshot.
What This Enables
Leaders see each score in context. They can see how their workforce sits against benchmark, where change will matter most, and which interventions a similar population has responded to.
Reading list
Selected References
Seligman, M.E.P. (2011). Flourish: A Visionary New Understanding of Happiness and Well-being. New York: Free Press.
Kern, M.L., Waters, L.E., Adler, A. & White, M.A. (2015). A multidimensional approach to measuring well-being in students: Application of the PERMA framework. The Journal of Positive Psychology, 10(3), 262–271.
Butler, J. & Kern, M.L. (2016). The PERMA-Profiler: A brief multidimensional measure of flourishing. International Journal of Wellbeing, 6(3), 1–48.
Donaldson, S.I., Cabrera, V. & Gaffaney, J. (2021). Following the science to generate well-being: Using positive psychology to support flourishing in organisations. Frontiers in Psychology, 12.
Donaldson, S.I., Lee, J.Y. & Donaldson, S.I. (2019). Evaluating positive psychology interventions at work: A systematic review and meta-analysis. International Journal of Applied Positive Psychology, 4, 113–134.
Donaldson, S. I., Suchta, M., & Donaldson, S. I. (2025). PERMA+4 well-being predicts the future: longitudinal evidence for employee positive functioning and performance. The Journal of Positive Psychology, 21(4), 799–804. https://doi.org/10.1080/17439760.2025.2542236
McQuaid, M. & Kern, P. Ongoing research, validation and program development of the PERMAH Wellbeing Evaluation.
Researchers and contributors to the framework are acknowledged in full within our research documentation.
Research, Validity & Reliability
How We Know the PERMAH Tool Works
The PERMAH Tool is a measurement instrument that provides insights into the wellbeing of individuals and teams within the context of schools, organisations, and communities. Based on Dr. Martin Seligman’s PERMA Model (2011), it measures wellbeing across six factors: Positive Emotion, Engagement, Relationships, Meaning, Accomplishment and Health, at the individual, team, and workplace level.
Measuring wellbeing is complex. Studies have shown that most people maintain relatively healthy and stable wellbeing over time even in the face of challenge (Bonanno, 2004; Diener, Lucas & Scollon, 2006; Capic, Li & Cummins, 2014); that wellbeing perceptions, experiences and behaviours are diverse and spread through complex social networks (Christakis & Fowler, 2009; Jarden, 2016); and that any self-report instrument carries inherent biases and limitations (Donaldson & Grant-Vallone, 2002).
Responsible scientific research never claims to be “proven”. It is always testing what we think we know to keep the field learning (Kern et al., 2019). With those challenges always in mind, we are committed to ongoing transparency about the validity and reliability of the science behind the PERMAH Tool. Four points guide us: theoretical grounding, psychometric validity, consistency, and continued research.
What guides us
The Four Points
1. Theoretical Grounding
The value of measurement is often visible through the numbers it produces. The theory those measures are built on matters just as much. The PERMAH Tool is grounded in the wellbeing theory originally proposed by Dr. Martin Seligman (2011), drawing on more than twenty years of research.
Seligman identified five essential elements that contribute to wellbeing: Positive Emotion, Engagement, Relationships, Meaning and Accomplishment. We, and many others including the World Health Organisation, consider physical health an integral pillar of wellbeing too. With Dr. Seligman’s permission we add the “H” for Health and refer to the model as PERMAH.
Just as we describe the construct of weather using elements such as temperature, humidity, wind speed and barometric pressure, PERMAH attempts to describe wellbeing through its component elements (Seligman, 2018). Each element is included because it: independently leads to wellbeing; can be pursued for its own intrinsic value; and can be defined and measured independently of all others.
The PERMA Profiler & Co-Creation
Dr. Peggy Kern, one of the PERMAH Tool co-creators, and her colleagues developed The PERMA Profiler (Butler & Kern, 2016) to measure each PERMA element (3 items per element, 15 items total) plus physical health, negative emotions, loneliness and happiness. The Profiler has been translated into Turkish (Aye, 2018), Japanese (Watanabe et al., 2018), Greek (Pezirkianidis et al., 2019), Mandarin (Kern et al., 2018; Lai et al., 2018) and German (Wammerl et al., 2019), and has been used to compare wellbeing across countries (Iasiello et al., 2017; Khaw & Kern, 2015), to measure staff wellbeing (Kern et al., 2014; Lovett & Lovett, 2016), and at the employee, team and supervisor levels (Donaldson, Donaldson, McQuaid & Kern, 2024).
Empirical work has continued (Donaldson et al., 2023; 2024; Donaldson, 2019; Donaldson, Lee & Donaldson, 2019; Heshmati et al., 2020; Kern et al., 2014; Watanabe et al., 2018). Some studies surface a five-element factor structure; others recover a three-factor structure of Positive Emotion, Relationships–Meaning, and Accomplishment–Engagement (Khaw & Kern, 2015), or only two factors (Umucu et al., 2019; Ryan et al., 2019). Goodman et al. (2018) found PERMA strongly associated with subjective wellbeing.
Dr. Seligman (2018) has argued the data strongly supports the theory: PERMA captures wellbeing and identifies at least some of its building blocks. Bartholomaeus et al. (2021) and Pezirkianidis et al. (2019) replicated the five-factor structure while also finding a general wellbeing factor, an important aspect of the model.
We have not chosen PERMA because we believe it is “proven”; good science is never proven, only continually refined. We have chosen it because Seligman’s assertion that PERMA gives people a useful, accessible way to understand, measure and act on wellbeing using evidence-based tools holds true. A meta-analysis of positive psychology workplace interventions (Donaldson, Lee & Donaldson, 2019) found that PERMA-focused interventions had a positive effect on both work outcomes and wellbeing precisely because of their multidimensional approach.
2. Psychometric Validity
Measuring psychological states is challenging, especially when matching a tool to a population and context. The most common question is the right one: does this instrument measure what it is designed to measure? Answering it well requires ongoing, reflective measurement of validity and reliability. That is our commitment.
The PERMAH Tool was originally based on the PERMA Profiler items. As organisations asked us to gather measures at different times and at the organisational level, we worked with Dr. Kern to add new items at those scales. We also partnered with Dr. Richard Ryan to incorporate validated measures from self-determination theory.
Latest Psychometric Results (July 2021)
We test the psychometric validity of the PERMAH Tool on a regular basis. The most recent results show strong scale reliability and internal consistency for individual factors, with the full instrument also performing strongly:
α > 0.8All 6 factors
α = 0.97Whole instrument
3,000+Respondents across evaluations
Cronbach’s alpha values above 0.8 indicate good internal consistency at the factor level; the whole-instrument alpha of 0.97 indicates the tool measures a coherent construct.
3a. Consistency Over Time
Wellbeing is an ongoing journey, not a one-time destination. We look at the consistency of responses and the stability of relationships within the data over time. The reliability of the PERMAH Tool is amplified when it is used to map wellbeing across multiple time points rather than once.
Many of our clients have welcomed mapping wellbeing over time precisely because it reveals insights that would otherwise stay hidden, including the surprising truth that wellbeing comprises both thriving and struggle, and how the three amplifiers (ability, motivation and psychological safety) carry intent into behaviour.
3b. Consistency Across Populations
Alongside the data collected through the tool itself, we periodically invest in randomised, nationally representative evaluation data in Australia, Canada, the United States and a growing list of other countries to understand population-level patterns.
This data is published in freely available reports and added as population norms in the evaluation for comparison. The breadth of data continually validates our measures and provides representative comparators directly inside the tool.
4. A Commitment to Continued Research
The research landscape is dynamic and constantly evolving. The tool continues to carefully and thoughtfully consider the fundamental building blocks on which the evidence rests: the generation of questions, the theoretical connections, validity and reliability, and the co-creation with experts.
We have assembled a research review board of leading wellbeing, change, leadership and diversity researchers around the world, alongside independent analysts, to regularly assess the measures we use, review the data we gather, and surface the insights we are gaining. This serves a two-fold purpose: it deepens our understanding of relationships and trends in the data, and it acts as a safeguard. The analysts flag any improbable relationships that could indicate evaluation miscalibration. So far, that has not happened.
Sources
References
Aye, E. B. (2018). Adaptation of the PERMA well-being scale into Turkish: Validity and reliability studies. Educational Research and Reviews, 13(4), 129–135.
Bartholomaeus, J. D., Iasiello, M. P., Jarden, A., Burke, K. J., & van Agteren, J. (2020). Evaluating the Psychometric Properties of the PERMA Profiler. Journal of Well-Being Assessment, 4(2), 163–180.
Bonanno, G. A. (2004). Loss, trauma, and human resilience: Have we underestimated the human capacity to thrive after extremely aversive events? American Psychologist, 59(1), 20.
Butler, J., & Kern, M. L. (2016). The PERMA-Profiler: A brief multidimensional measure of flourishing. International Journal of Wellbeing, 6, 1–48.
Cabrera, V., & Donaldson, S. I. (2023). PERMA to PERMA+4 building blocks of well-being: a systematic review of the empirical literature. The Journal of Positive Psychology.
Capic, T., Li, N., & Cummins, R. (2018). Confirmation of Subjective Wellbeing Set-Points: Foundational for Subjective Social Indicators. Social Indicators Research, 137.
Christakis, N., & Fowler, J. (2009). Connected: The amazing power of social networks and how they shape our lives. New York: Little, Brown and Company.
Diener, E., Lucas, R. E., & Scollon, C. N. (2006). Beyond the hedonic treadmill: Revising the adaptation theory of well-being. American Psychologist, 61(4), 305–314.
Donaldson, S. I. (2019). Evaluating positive functioning and performance: A positive work and Organisations approach [Doctoral dissertation]. Retrieved from PQDT Global.
Donaldson, S. I., & Grant-Vallone, E. J. (2002). Understanding self-report bias in Organisational behavior research. Journal of Business and Psychology, 17(2), 245–260.
Donaldson, S., Lee, J., & Donaldson, S. (2019). Evaluating Positive Psychology Interventions at Work: a Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis. International Journal of Applied Positive Psychology, 4.
Donaldson, S. I., Donaldson, S. I., McQuaid, M., & Kern, M. L. (2023). The PERMA+4 Short Scale: A Cross-Cultural Empirical Validation Using Item Response Theory. International Journal of Applied Positive Psychology.
Donaldson, S. I., Donaldson, S. I., McQuaid, M., & Kern, M. L. (2024). Systems-Informed PERMA+4: Measuring Well-being and Performance at the Employee, Team and Supervisor Levels. International Journal of Applied Positive Psychology, 1.
Donaldson, S. I., Donaldson, S. I., McQuaid, M., & Kern, M. L. (2024). Systems-Informed PERMA+4 and Psychological Safety: Predicting Work-Related Well-Being and Performance Across an International Sample. The Journal of Positive Psychology.
Donaldson, S. I., Ellardus van Zyl, L., & Donaldson, S. I. (2022). Frontiers in Psychology, 12.
Donaldson, S. I., Donaldson, S. I., & Suchta, M. Development and validation of the Global Economic Security Scale. International Journal of Applied Positive Psychology.
Donaldson, S. I., Suchta, M., & Donaldson, S. I. (2025). PERMA+4 well-being predicts the future: longitudinal evidence for employee positive functioning and performance. The Journal of Positive Psychology, 21(4), 799–804. https://doi.org/10.1080/17439760.2025.2542236
Goodman, F. R., Disabato, D. J., Kashdan, T. B., & Kauffman, S. B. (2018). Measuring well-being: A comparison of subjective well-being and PERMA. The Journal of Positive Psychology, 13(4), 321–332.
Heshmati, S., Brick, T. R., Roeser, R. W., & Oravecz, Z. (2020). Assessing psychological well-being in early adulthood: Empirical evidence for the structure of daily well-being via network analysis. Applied Developmental Science.
Iasiello, M., Bartholomaeus, J., Jarden, A., & Kelly, G. (2017). Measuring PERMA+ in South Australia, the state of wellbeing: A comparison with national and international norms. Journal of Positive Psychology and Wellbeing, 1(2), 53–72.
Jarden, A. (2016). Introducing workplace wellbeing to Organisations: The “Me, We, Us” model. Positive Work and Organisations: Research and Practice, 1, 1–4.
Kern, M., Williams, P., Spong, C., Colla, R., Sharma, K., Downie, A., Taylor, J., Sharp, S., Siokou, C., & Oades, L. (2019). Systems informed positive psychology. The Journal of Positive Psychology, 15.
Kern, M. L., Waters, L., Adler, A., & White, M. (2014). Assessing employee wellbeing in schools using a multifaceted approach: Associations with physical health, life satisfaction, and professional thriving. Psychology, 5(6), 500–513.
Kern, M. L., Zeng, G., Hou, H., & Peng, K. (2018). The Chinese version of the EPOCH measure of adolescent well-being: Testing cross-cultural measurement invariance. Journal of Psychoeducational Assessment, 0(0), 1–13.
Khaw, D., & Kern, M. (2015). A cross-cultural comparison of the PERMA model of well-being. Undergraduate Journal of Psychology at Berkeley, 8, 10–23.
Lai, M. K., Leung, C., Kwok, S. Y. C., Hui, A. N. N., Lo, H. H. M., Leung, J. T. Y., & Tam, C. H. L. (2018). A multidimensional PERMA-H positive education model, general satisfaction of school life, and character strengths use in Hong Kong senior primary school students. Frontiers in Psychology, 9, 1–11.
Lovett, N., & Lovett, T. (2016). Wellbeing in education: Staff matter. International Journal of Social Science and Humanity, 6(2), 107–112.
Pezirkianidis, C., Stalikas, A., Lakioti, A., & Yotsidi, V. (2019). Validating a multidimensional measure of wellbeing in Greece: Translation, factor structure, and measurement invariance of the PERMA profiler. Current Psychology, 1–18.
Ryan, J., Curtis, R., Olds, T., Edney, S., Vandelanotte, C., Plotnikoff, R., & Maher, C. (2019). Psychometric properties of the PERMA profiler for measuring wellbeing in Australian adults. PLoS One, 14(12), 1–12.
Seligman, M. E. (2011). Flourish: A visionary new understanding of happiness and wellbeing. New York: Simon and Schuster.
Seligman, M. E. (2018). PERMA and the building blocks of well-being. The Journal of Positive Psychology, 13(4), 333–335.
Umucu, E., Wu, J. R., Sanchez, J., Brooks, J. M., Chiu, C. Y., Tu, W. M., & Chan, F. (2019). Psychometric validation of the PERMA-profiler as a well-being measure for student veterans. Journal of American College Health, 68(3), 1–7.
Wammerl, M., Jaunig, J., Mairunteregger, T., & Streit, P. (2019). The German version of the PERMA-profiler: Evidence for construct and convergent validity of the PERMA theory of well-being in German speaking countries. Journal of Well-Being Assessment, 3(2–3), 75–96.
Watanabe, K., Kawakami, N., Shiotani, T., Adachi, H., Matsumoto, K., Imamura, K., & Kern, M. L. (2018). The Japanese workplace PERMA-Profiler: A validation study among Japanese workers. Journal of Occupational Health.
WHO (2006). Constitution of the World Health Organisation. Retrieved from www.who.int/governance/eb/who_constitution_en.pdf
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