Background: The Act Belong Commit-ABCs of Mental Health campaign is the world’s first comprehensive, population-wide, community-based initiative to promote mental health. In response to a growing demand for valid tools to monitor mental health promoting behaviours, this study presents the development and psychometric evaluation of the ABC-Mental Health Promoting Behaviours (ABC-MHPB) scale in a Danish population-based sample. Methods: A 10-item scale was developed, based on the ABC framework, to assess mental health promoting behaviours. A total of 119,221 randomly selected participants aged 18+ filled out an electronic survey, including the scale to measure the underlying construct of mental health promoting behaviours. Analyses pertaining to construct, content, reliability, discriminant, and convergent validity assessments were carried out, and an operationalization was proposed. Results: The initial 10-item version showed inadequate model fit, resulting in the removal of one item. Construct validity testing supported a 9-item three-factor model with satisfactory fit. Full invariance was observed across education (primary/unknown vs. higher), and partial invariance across sex (women vs. men) and age (<25 vs. 25+), with content, discriminant, and convergent validity also supported. Based on a practical operationalization of the scale, regression results showed a cross-sectional pattern characteristic of a dose-response association with the outcomes of mental well-being and loneliness. Conclusion: The findings suggest that the 9-item ABC-MHPB scale is an appropriate tool for assessing and monitoring mental health promoting behaviours in the general population and might be relevant as a tool to evaluate interventions aiming to promote mental health. Further validation over time and in diverse populations, along with intervention and longitudinal studies, is needed to confirm its associations with mental health outcomes.
Nielsen et al. (2026) studied this question.
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