Development of Adolescent Strengths Use Scale for Turkish adolescents

ABSTRACT

Objective

This study aimed to develop and validate a new measure- the Adolescent Strengths Use Scale- to assess school-based strength use among Turkish adolescents.

Method

The study group consisted 1209 Turkish students in grades 7–12. A 12-item pool was initially created in light of the relevant literature and content analysis of open-ended questions asked to the relevant stakeholders including students, parents, teachers and psychological counsellors. Then, 16 experts evaluated the items in terms of their scope, conformity with language, and compliance with measurement and evaluation principles. The expert evaluation resulted in 7 remaining items which were subsequently tested with a pilot study (n = 103 students).

Results

Exploratory factor analysis (n = 596 students) yielded a single factor structure that explained 49.4% of the total variance. Confirmatory factor analysis (n = 376) provided a good model fit to the data: X²/df = 2.52, p < .001, TLI = 0.96, CFI = 0.98, GFI = 0.97, and RMSEA = 0.06. Regarding criterion validity, the scale had a significant positive correlation with student subjective well-being and prosociality while it had negative significant correlations with symptoms of internalising and externalising behaviours. Furthermore, the scale produced strong internal reliability estimates (α = 0,82, Ω = 0,83).The test-retest result was also sufficient (r = 0,88).

Conclusions

The results suggest that the newly developed scale can be used as a reliable and valid assessment tool to measure adolescents’ strength use in school settings.

KEY POINTS

What is already known about this topic:

1. Strengths have an impact on young people’s mental health.

2. Using strengths contributes to the well-being of young people.

3. There are practices focused on strengths in schools.

What this topic adds:

1. There is a need to develop a scale specific to Turkish culture, suitable for the adolescent, and measure individual existing strengths.

2. This study, will help students to discover their current strengths and use them in all areas of their lives.

3. This study aims to develop a new measure named Adolescent Strength Use Scale and test its psychometric properties in Turkish adolescents.

KEYWORDS:

• Strengths use
• character strengths
• strengths
• school
• adolescent

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Ethical approval

All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards. The study was also approved by the Human Ethics Research Committee at Gaziantep University.

Data availability statement

The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author, [Ramazan Demir], upon reasonable request.

Informed consent

Consent was obtained from all participants included in the study.

Additional information

Funding

The authors received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article