Construction and Standardization of a School Maladjustment Scale for High School Students

In order to construct and standardize a School Maladjustment Scale, 405 students (261 girls, 144 boys) were selected from junior high schools of City of Tehran by cluster sampling method. The participants completed the School Maladjustment Scale. Examining the item-total correlation led to elimination of 23 items. The results of principle components analysis and varimax rotation indicated that 24 items had factor loading less than 0.3, so these items were eliminated. The Cronbach's Alpha reliability coefficient for 88 item scale was 0.979. The results of factor analysis led to extraction of six factors: 1) academic indifference and lack of attention, 2) inappropriate behaviors toward teachers and classmates, 3) destructive and indiscipline behaviors, 4) bullying and antisocial behaviors, 5) deception and violation of rules, and 6) withdrawal and victimization by bullies, which explained 57.80 percent of the total variance. The concurrent validity of the scale using comparison to the Student Adjustment Inventory (Sinha & Singh, 1993) was 0.405. The results of confirmatory factor analysis indicated that the 6-factor model was supported by more than seven fit indices. All of the six components yielded high reliability coefficient