Workplace PERMA-Profiler (and PERMA-Profiler)
Identity
Version: PERMA-Profiler (Butler & Kern, 2016); Workplace PERMA-Profiler (Kern), a work-contextualised reword of the same item set. No numbered revision is in circulation.
Structure: 23 items total: 15 core items measuring the five PERMA domains (three per domain), plus 8 additional items covering overall well-being, negative emotion, loneliness and physical health. The Workplace form retains this structure with items reworded to the work context; short forms exist but are not the reference version.
Original citation: Butler J, Kern ML (2016). The PERMA-Profiler: A brief multidimensional measure of flourishing. International Journal of Wellbeing. DOI 10.5502/ijw.v6i3.526
Steward / publisher: Instrument developed by Julie Butler and Margaret (Peggy) L. Kern; the PERMA framework derives from Seligman (2011). The Workplace adaptation is attributed to Kern. Distributed by the authors through Peggy Kern's academic website rather than a commercial publisher.
Constructs claimed
The instrument operationalises Seligman's PERMA model of flourishing across five claimed domains: Positive emotion, Engagement, Relationships, Meaning and Accomplishment, each measured by three items (Butler & Kern 2016). A composite overall well-being score is derived from the fifteen domain items together with a general happiness item. Ancillary items index negative emotion, loneliness and self-rated physical health but are not part of the five-domain model. The Workplace PERMA-Profiler claims to measure the same five constructs specifically as they are experienced at work, that is workplace flourishing (Watanabe et al. 2018; Choi et al. 2019). The multidimensional PERMA measurement approach was first applied to a defined setting in schools by Kern et al. 2014, which prefigured the workplace adaptation.
Evidence
Structural validity Lowcontestedevidence form: canonical
indirectness see findings
The claimed five-factor structure is only partly and inconsistently supported, and the factor structure is the most contested aspect of the instrument. In occupational samples the correlated five-factor model has typically reached only marginal fit: the Japanese Workplace PERMA-Profiler gave CFI 0.892, TLI 0.858, RMSEA 0.105 and SRMR 0.051 (Watanabe et al. 2018), the Korean version CFI 0.909, TLI 0.881, RMSEA 0.110 and SRMR 0.054 (Choi et al. 2019), and the Chinese workplace version CFI 0.887, TLI 0.855, RMSEA 0.114 and SRMR 0.060 (Yang et al. 2024); all three show RMSEA above conventional thresholds. The Polish Workplace version is the clearest positive case, with the five-factor model reaching desired fit and outperforming a single-factor model in a large sample (N=1070) (Fortuna et al. 2025). Evidence from the general (non-workplace) PERMA-Profiler diverges further: an Australian adult study could replicate neither the theorised five-factor model nor a single-factor alternative and concluded the psychometric properties were insufficient (Ryan et al. 2019); a US student-veteran sample yielded a two-factor solution (emotional versus performance character strengths) (Umucu et al. 2019); and a Chinese haemodialysis sample extracted two dimensions (Qian et al. 2025). Where the five-factor model does hold, it is often as five highly correlated first-order factors: in a large Chinese general sample the first-order five-factor solution fitted better than a higher-order well-being factor (CFI 0.943 after modification) (Nie et al. 2024), and a French study confirmed both a correlated five-factor and a second-order model while its exploratory analysis suggested a more parsimonious three factors (Jourdan et al. 2026). In autistic adults a bifactor model with a dominant general factor fitted better than the five-factor model (Grosvenor et al. 2023). Five-factor support is stronger in adolescent adaptations (Fernandes et al. 2024; Waigel & Lemos 2023). Across studies the Engagement domain is the recurrent weak point.
Confidence note: Low. Many studies but findings are inconsistent across populations and forms; five-factor fit is frequently marginal, competing two-factor, three-factor, single-factor and bifactor solutions recur, and the workplace form specifically has few confirmatory studies.
Convergent and discriminant validity Moderatecontestedevidence form: canonical
indirectness see findings
Convergent and discriminant patterns are generally in the expected direction, though discriminant separation from distress measures is sometimes weak. For the Workplace form, well-being domains correlated moderately to strongly and positively with job satisfaction and work-related psychosocial factors and inversely with psychological distress (Watanabe et al. 2018), and positively with work engagement and life mental well-being while correlating negatively with burnout, occupational stressors and stress responses (Choi et al. 2019). For the general form, a large Chinese study reported convergent correlations of r=0.53 to 0.85 and discriminant correlations of r=-0.19 to -0.38 (Nie et al. 2024). A French study found strong positive associations with flourishing and perceived happiness (convergent) and weaker associations with anxiety, depression, loneliness and negative emotion (discriminant), while cautioning that some correlations with anxiety and depression nonetheless reached moderate to strong magnitude (Jourdan et al. 2026). An Australian study found moderate correlations with depression, anxiety and stress (r=-0.374 to -0.645) but no meaningful association with objectively measured physical activity or sleep (Ryan et al. 2019), and an autistic-adult study confirmed expected correlations with mental-health conditions and life satisfaction (Grosvenor et al. 2023).
Confidence note: Moderate. Multiple studies across the general and workplace forms show consistent, theory-congruent convergent correlations; discriminant validity is adequate but repeatedly weaker against depression and anxiety, and no association with objective (non-self-report) markers.
Criterion validity: reference standard Lowthinevidence form: canonical
indirectness see findings
Criterion evidence against organisational and health outcomes is limited to cross-sectional, self-reported proxies; no study retrieved in this pass links the instrument to hard organisational records such as sickness absence, staff turnover or medically diagnosed conditions. Workplace well-being domains were associated with job strain components: job control and supervisor and coworker support correlated with all five domains, while job demands related only to Engagement and Meaning (Yang et al. 2021). Well-being domains, principally Positive emotion, Engagement and Relationships, were inversely associated with personal and work-related burnout in a Taiwanese multicentre sample (N=242) (Wu et al. 2025), and Positive emotion was inversely associated with prolonged fatigue in a Chinese workforce sample (Yang et al. 2024). In a university-workplace study, workplace well-being mediated the relationship between psychological distress and subjective quality of life and was lower among staff with suspected psychological health conditions (Ng et al. 2025). Among rural veterans, well-being scores were positively associated with mental and physical health outcomes and were lower in those with service-connected disabilities (Umucu et al. 2024). All of these are concurrent associations rather than predictive criterion validity against objective outcomes.
Confidence note: Low. Several studies show theory-consistent associations with burnout, fatigue, job strain and distress, but all are cross-sectional self-report; there is no predictive validity against objective organisational or clinical outcomes and no UK workplace evidence.
Criterion validity: organisational Absent (a finding about the literature)untestedevidence form: canonical
indirectness see findings
Organisational criterion evidence (sickness absence, turnover, performance, diagnosed conditions in a work context): see the criterion findings; graded from the pass-one record.
Confidence note: Low. Several studies show theory-consistent associations with burnout, fatigue, job strain and distress, but all are cross-sectional self-report; there is no predictive validity against objective organisational or clinical outcomes and no UK workplace evidence.
Internal consistency Highwell-establishedevidence form: canonical
indirectness see findings
Internal consistency is the instrument's strongest property and is generally acceptable to good, with the Engagement subscale the consistent exception. For the Workplace form, Cronbach's alpha ranged from 0.75 to 0.96 in Japanese workers (Watanabe et al. 2018), 0.70 to 0.95 in Korean workers (Choi et al. 2019) and 0.69 to 0.93 in Chinese workers (Yang et al. 2024); the Polish Workplace version met minimum reliability thresholds (Fortuna et al. 2025). For the general form, alphas were 0.79 to 0.88 in a large Chinese sample (Nie et al. 2024), the total scale reached alpha 0.914 in a Chinese haemodialysis sample (Qian et al. 2025), and an autistic-adult sample reported alpha 0.93 (Grosvenor et al. 2023). In Australian adults subscale alphas ranged 0.80 to 0.93 for all domains except Engagement (alpha 0.66) (Ryan et al. 2019); the French validation likewise noted lower reliability specifically for Engagement (Jourdan et al. 2026). Omega and composite reliability were reported as adequate in an adolescent adaptation (Fernandes et al. 2024). The three-item domains, especially Engagement, are the source of most reliability shortfalls.
Confidence note: High. Many studies across multiple populations, forms and languages report consistent alpha values in the acceptable to good range, with a reproducible and openly reported weakness for the Engagement subscale.
Test-retest reliability Lowthin
indirectness see summary
Test-retest reliability is thinly evidenced and this is a genuine gap, most acute for the Workplace form. The founding paper reports cross-time consistency for the general PERMA-Profiler but does not present a conventional retest coefficient in the abstract retrieved (Butler & Kern 2016). The Japanese Workplace validation collected a one-month follow-up (baseline N=310, follow-up N=86) and reported intraclass correlation coefficients of 0.75 to 0.96, but these ICCs are presented alongside internal-consistency alphas and the abstract does not cleanly separate a retest ICC per domain (Watanabe et al. 2018). The Chinese workplace version similarly reported ICCs of 0.70 to 0.92 in a reliability analysis rather than a dedicated retest design (Yang et al. 2024). The clearest temporal-stability evidence comes from non-workplace forms: the Polish Workplace study included a repeated-measure subsample (N=66) and reported strong stability (Fortuna et al. 2025); a French study reported good temporal stability for the total score and most subscales (Jourdan et al. 2026); and a Chinese haemodialysis study reported a retest correlation of r=0.764 (Qian et al. 2025). No UK or occupational-UK retest estimate was located, and retest intervals, when reported, are short (around one month). The absence of a robust, well-powered retest study specifically for the Workplace PERMA-Profiler is a flagged evidence gap.
Confidence note: Low. A small number of short-interval studies with modest follow-up samples, mostly reporting ICCs bundled with internal consistency rather than purpose-designed retest coefficients; no workplace-specific, adequately powered, or UK retest evidence located. Flag: near-absent for the Workplace form.
Measurement invariance Lowthinevidence form: canonical
indirectness see findings
Invariance testing exists but is concentrated in non-workplace populations and rarely reaches full scalar invariance in occupational samples. A large Chinese general-population study established factorial invariance across genders (Nie et al. 2024). A Brazilian adolescent adaptation demonstrated invariance across age groups and gender (Fernandes et al. 2024), and an open-and-distance-learning adaptation in Botswana examined invariance within a five-factor framework (Magare et al. 2022). For work-specific instruments in the wider PERMA family, the Spanish PERMA+4 Positive Functioning at Work scale showed measurement invariance across educational levels (Garcia-Selva et al. 2024). For the Workplace PERMA-Profiler itself, no study retrieved in this pass reports a full multigroup invariance analysis across sex, age, occupation or language, and the level reached (configural, metric or scalar) for occupational deployment is therefore not established. Cross-language equivalence is assumed rather than formally tested, since each translation is validated as a standalone instrument.
Confidence note: Low. Invariance is established (up to scalar in some cases) for general-population and adolescent forms, but is absent for the Workplace PERMA-Profiler specifically; occupational and cross-occupation invariance was not located.
Responsiveness and MIC Absent (a finding about the literature)untestedevidence form: canonical
indirectness see findings
Responsiveness and a minimal important change threshold are essentially unestablished. No study retrieved in this pass reports a minimal important change, minimal detectable change tied to an anchor, or a formal responsiveness analysis for the Workplace PERMA-Profiler. Some validation studies computed measurement error and, in the Japanese case, measurement-error statistics alongside reliability (Watanabe et al. 2018), but these are not responsiveness or MIC estimates. Intervention and longitudinal PERMA studies exist in the wider literature, yet a defensible, citable MIC value for interpreting change scores in a workplace deployment was not located.
Confidence note: Absent. No responsiveness or minimal-important-change evidence located for the Workplace PERMA-Profiler in this pass.
Populations, languages and norms
The Workplace PERMA-Profiler has been validated in occupational samples in Japanese (Watanabe et al. 2018), Korean (Choi et al. 2019), Chinese (Yang et al. 2024) and Polish (Fortuna et al. 2025) workers, with further occupational application in Taiwanese (Wu et al. 2025) and university-staff (Ng et al. 2025) samples. The general PERMA-Profiler has been validated far more widely, including English-language Australian adults (Ryan et al. 2019), US student veterans (Umucu et al. 2019; Umucu et al. 2024), autistic adults (Grosvenor et al. 2023), Chinese adults and patients (Nie et al. 2024; Qian et al. 2025), French adults (Jourdan et al. 2026), German adults (Wammerl et al. 2019) and adolescents in Brazil and Argentina (Fernandes et al. 2024; Waigel & Lemos 2023). No UK validation study, UK occupational norms or UK benchmark tables were located in this pass; the founding studies used large but predominantly online international-English samples (Butler & Kern 2016), and no published normative reference specific to UK workplaces was found. Practitioners in the UK would therefore be relying on non-UK reference data.
Criticisms and controversies
The central controversy is whether PERMA is empirically distinguishable from general subjective well-being. Goodman and colleagues found that a PERMA composite and an established subjective well-being measure were near-indistinguishable (correlating very highly), arguing the five elements do not add measurable information beyond overall well-being and raising a jangle-fallacy concern (Goodman et al. 2018). This is reinforced structurally by the recurrent finding that the five factors are so highly intercorrelated that single-factor, bifactor or reduced-factor solutions often fit as well as or better than the theorised five-factor model (Grosvenor et al. 2023; Umucu et al. 2019; Qian et al. 2025), and by an Australian study that could not replicate the five-factor structure and judged the psychometric properties insufficient (Ryan et al. 2019). A second, consistent criticism is the weak Engagement subscale, which repeatedly shows the lowest reliability (for example alpha 0.66) and poorest item performance (Ryan et al. 2019; Jourdan et al. 2026). A third issue is discriminant validity against distress: correlations with anxiety and depression sometimes reach moderate-to-strong magnitude, blurring the separation between well-being and ill-being (Jourdan et al. 2026). The proliferation of a work-focused successor framework, PERMA+4, which adds further blocks and has itself been flagged for a possible jangle fallacy with psychological safety, reflects unsettled debate about what the workplace model should contain (Donaldson et al. 2022; Lorenz et al. 2023). Finally, the Workplace form specifically rests on a much thinner evidence base than the general PERMA-Profiler: its occupational validations are few, mostly East Asian and European, generally reach only marginal confirmatory fit, and lack dedicated test-retest, invariance, responsiveness and UK evidence.
References (24)
- Butler J, Kern ML (2016). The PERMA-Profiler: A brief multidimensional measure of flourishing https://doi.org/10.5502/ijw.v6i3.526
- Goodman FR, Disabato DJ, Kashdan TB, Kauffman SB (2018). Measuring well-being: A comparison of subjective well-being and PERMA https://doi.org/10.1080/17439760.2017.1388434
- Kern ML, Waters LE, Adler A, White MA (2014). A multidimensional approach to measuring well-being in students: Application of the PERMA framework https://doi.org/10.1080/17439760.2014.936962
- Wammerl M, Jaunig J, Mairunteregger T, Streit P (2019). The German Version of the PERMA-Profiler: Evidence for Construct and Convergent Validity https://doi.org/10.1007/s41543-019-00021-0
- Donaldson SI, van Zyl LE, Donaldson SI (2022). PERMA+4: A Framework for Work-Related Wellbeing, Performance and Positive Organizational Psychology 2.0 https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.817244
- Watanabe K, Kawakami N, Shiotani T et al. (2018). The Japanese Workplace PERMA-Profiler: A validation study among Japanese workers. https://doi.org/10.1539/joh.2018-0050-OA
- Choi SP, Suh C, Yang JW et al. (2019). Korean translation and validation of the Workplace Positive emotion, Engagement, Relationships, Meaning, and Accomplishment (PERMA)-Profiler. https://doi.org/10.35371/aoem.2019.31.e17
- Yang CC, Chen HT, Luo KH et al. (2024). The validation of Chinese version of workplace PERMA-profiler and the association between workplace well-being and fatigue. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12889-024-18194-6
- Fortuna P, Czerw A, Ostafińska-Molik B et al. (2025). Flourishing at work: Psychometric properties of the Polish version of the Workplace PERMA-Profiler. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0319088
- Yang CC, Watanabe K, Kawakami N (2021). The Associations Between Job Strain, Workplace PERMA Profiler, and Work Engagement. https://doi.org/10.1097/JOM.0000000000002455
- Wu TW, Chuang HY, Lin CP et al. (2025). Is Well-being Associated With Burnout? From a Multicenter Cross-sectional Study in Taiwan. https://doi.org/10.1097/JOM.0000000000003318
- Umucu E, Wu JR, Sanchez J et al. (2019). Psychometric validation of the PERMA-profiler as a well-being measure for student veterans. https://doi.org/10.1080/07448481.2018.1546182
- Ryan J, Curtis R, Olds T et al. (2019). Psychometric properties of the PERMA Profiler for measuring wellbeing in Australian adults. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0225932
- Nie YZ, Zhang X, Hong NW et al. (2024). Psychometric validation of the PERMA-profiler for well-being in Chinese adults. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.actpsy.2024.104248
- Jourdan J, Serrand C, Chevallier T, et al. (2026). PERMA-Profiler as a multidimensional measure of well-being in a French context. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-026-57354-z
- Qian Y, Yan H, Zeng X et al. (2025). The Chinese version of the PERMA profiler: a validity and reliability study. https://doi.org/10.1186/s40359-025-02560-z
- Magare I, Graham MA, Eloff I (2022). An Assessment of the Reliability and Validity of the PERMA Well-Being Scale for Adult Undergraduate Students in an Open and Distance Learning Context. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph192416886
- Grosvenor LP, Errichetti CL, Holingue C et al. (2023). Self-Report Measurement of Well-Being in Autistic Adults: Psychometric Properties of the PERMA Profiler. https://doi.org/10.1089/aut.2022.0049
- Umucu E, Granger TA, Pan D et al. (2024). Initial validation of a short version of the PERMA profiler in a national sample of rural veterans. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpubh.2024.1500659
- Fernandes I, Zanini DS, Peixoto EM (2024). PERMA-Profiler for adolescents: validity evidence based on internal structure and related constructs. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2024.1415084
- Waigel NC, Lemos VN (2023). Psychometric Properties of PERMA Profiler Scale in Argentinian Adolescents. https://doi.org/10.21500/20112084.5737
- Ng XH, Chu J, Doshi K (2025). A PERMA-nent solution to understanding psychological wellbeing? Exploring the utility of the PERMA model in a university workplace. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1598910
- Lorenz T, Ho J, Beyer M et al. (2023). Measuring PERMA+4: validation of the German version of the Positive Functioning at Work Scale. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1231299
- García-Selva A, Neipp MC, Solanes-Puchol Á et al. (2024). The PERMA+4 Positive Functioning at Work Scale: Spanish Adaptation and Validation. https://doi.org/10.7334/psicothema2023.341
Record notes
[Upgraded from v0.1 to v0.2 structure in pass two; criterion field split, licence re-verified 2026-07-12.] Overall confidence: the general PERMA-Profiler is moderately well studied, but the Workplace PERMA-Profiler specifically rests on a thin, geographically narrow occupational evidence base (chiefly Japanese, Korean, Chinese and Polish workers) with generally marginal confirmatory fit. Internal consistency is the one property that grades High; structural validity, criterion validity, test-retest and invariance all grade Low, and responsiveness/MIC is Absent. No UK validation, UK occupational norms or UK benchmark data were located. Schema stress-test notes: (1) The schema's single identity block does not cleanly separate the general PERMA-Profiler from the Workplace PERMA-Profiler, which have materially different evidence depth; the record repeatedly distinguishes them in prose but a structured field pairing each property to 'general form' versus 'workplace form' would record the asymmetry more honestly. (2) Test-retest was hard to record faithfully because several studies report ICCs that mix retest stability with internal consistency; the coefficients cited (for example 0.75 to 0.96, Watanabe 2018) should not be read as clean retest values. (3) The word 'clinical' is deliberately not applied to any workplace deployment here; where clinical screeners appear as validation comparators they are outcome measures, not the deployment context. (4) A dedicated COSMIN systematic review of the Workplace PERMA-Profiler was not located in this pass, so grades are synthesised from individual validation studies rather than an aggregated quality appraisal. (5) One candidate source (Persian older-adults validation, Payoun 2020) was excluded because no resolvable DOI was found; the Flourish Index paper surfaced by keyword overlap was excluded as it does not measure the PERMA-Profiler. The licence status is reported from the developers' distribution practice rather than a citable licence document, which the schema's licence_status field would ideally flag as evidence-grade metadata rather than a settled fact.