TITLE:
Validity and Reliability of an Adaptation of Personal and Social Skills Scale for K-Students for Use in 2.691 Greek Elementary Students
AUTHORS:
Ntina Kourmousi, Georgios Markogiannakis, Ioannis Lazaridis, Konstantina Kolliopoulou, Kalliopi Papoutsaki, Kalliopi Kounenou, Chara Tzavara, Vasilios Koutras
KEYWORDS:
Personal and Social Skills, Reliability, Validity, Exploratory Factor Analysis, Students, Personal and Social Skills Scale for Elementary Students
JOURNAL NAME:
Creative Education,
Vol.8 No.14,
November
30,
2017
ABSTRACT: The Personal and Social Skills Scale for Preschool K-Students Aged 4-6 (Kourmousi&Koutras, inKourmousi, 2012) is a measure comprising eight subscales, designed to measure kindergarten students’ personal and social skills in the school environment. The presented study aimed to adapt it for use in elementary students—also adding two more dimensions, namely “Responsibility Taking” and “Use of Spoken and Written language”—and assess its reliability and validity in a sample of 2.691first and second graders of Greek elementary schools. The adapted scale’s construct validity was examined initially by an exploratory factor analysis (EFA). The adapted scale’s correlation with the Behavioral Academic Self-Esteem (B.A.S.E.) scale and with demographic information was also investigated. Internal consistency reliability was satisfactory with Cronbach’s alphas ranging from 0.82 to 0.92 for all subscales. EFAidentified an 11 factor model. The extracted factors explained 70.9% of the total variance. All subscales were found to be significantly and positively correlated with each other. Correlations of self-esteem with all subscales were also significant withthe highest ones found with Problem Solving, Concentration of Attention,Participation/Cooperation in class, Friendship skills and Use of Spoken and Written Language. In most questionnaire subscales lower scores were exhibited by boys, by younger students, by those who did not comprehend the spoken language well, by students who received special education support (attended an integration class or received parallel support), by those re-attending the same grade, and by those whose mothers had lower educational level. In conclusion, the Personal and Social Skills Scale for Elementary Students Aged 7-9(PSSS-E), namely the adaptation of the PSSS-K for use in older children, was found to have satisfactory psychometric properties. Therefore, it can be used to evaluate elementary students’ personal and social skills.