Refining the Global INSPIRE measure of recovery priorities: A qualitative, linguistic, and statistical approach

Background Global INSPIRE is a 20-item self-report scale assessing priorities of personal recovery, defined as living a meaningful and satisfying life despite mental health challenges. Grounded in the CHIME framework (Connectedness, Hope, Identity, Meaning, and Empowerment), it asks how important each item is to the respondent’s recovery. Its initial validation (Version 1.0), involved a UK multicultural sample, showed promise, but model fit needed refinement (CFI = 0.80, TLI = 0.77). Methods Following best practices in scale development (DeVellis, 2016), we employed a three-step approach to enhance the scale’s psychometric properties. First, multiple-group confirmatory factor analysis was conducted in the original sample to identify problematic items. Second, these items were revised using qualitative feedback from six British English-speaking reviewers and corpus linguistic analysis. Third, the revised version was tested in a new UK sample. Results Two problematic items (Items 5 and 13) were identified. Corpus linguistic analysis of six reviewers’ comments suggested Item 5 “Feeling hopeful about my future” be changed to “Believing in a positive future for myself”, and Item 13 “Understanding my mental health experience” to “Finding meaning in my mental health experiences”. The updated version of Global INSPIRE (Version 2.0) was completed by 207 people (Age 40 ± 12.50 years; 115 women, 90 men), yielding substantially improved model fit (CFI = 0.965, TLI = 0.959) and strong internal consistency (ordinal alpha = 0.93; Cronbach’s alpha = 0.91). Conclusion Global INSPIRE British English Version 2.0 offers a more robust tool for assessing recovery priorities, demonstrating the value of integrating quantitative, qualitative, and linguistic approaches in scale refinement.