Abstract
The current study was conducted to develop a valid and reliable indigenous
scale to measure social competence in adolescents. Keeping the cultural
specificity of social competence in view, focus groups were conducted with
teachers, expert psychologists, and parents. After careful scrutiny of
constructs generated through this practice, researchers identified common
sub-constructs covering social competence to optimal extent which included
conflict management, individuality, self-efficacy, social adaptability,
resolving identity crisis, acceptance of social norm. Similarly, behaviours
were generated through separate focus groups conduced with school and
college teachers, parents, and adolescents. The verbatim obtained from each
focus group was transcribed and after eliminating repeated, culturally
irrelevant, and age-wise inappropriate behaviours, 73 behaviours were
finalized. These were, then, transformed into statements and drafted using
response format Never (1), Sometime (2), Often (3) and Always (4).
Psychometric properties were determined by administering finalized items
pool on conveniently drawn sample (N = 398) from four cites of Punjab.
Principle component factor analysis with varimax rotation, provided six
exclusive factors i.e., self-efficacy, sociability, adaptability, leadership, selfconfidence and social initiative. Some of them were consistent with
empirically generated constructs while others had theoretical relevance. The
final scale contained 53 items with statistically derived six exclusive factors
with recommended alpha coefficient ranges (.60-.87) (Peterson, 1994),
significant inter-correlations of sub-scales with overall social competence,
and among sub-scales. These factors have been discussed in terms of
significance of the scale and its cultural relevance.
Sultan Shujja, Farah Malik, Nashi Khan. (2015) Social Competence Scale for Adolescents (SCSA): Development and Validation Within Cultural Perspective, Journal of Behavioural Sciences, Volume 25, Issue 1.
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