Examining the Psychometric Properties of the Persian Version of the Fear of School Year Loss Questionnaire in the COVID-19 Epidemic

The Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus–2 (SARS–CoV–2) was first detected in Wuhan, China, in 2019 and spread rapidly worldwide, leading to global–scale transformations, such as physical distancing, traffic restrictions, and long–term forced quarantines. The pandemic led to many problems and challenges for everybody, especially students. Students and learners were forced to continue learning virtually. There were also grounds for psychological problems for students and educators. Persistent anxiety about failing e–learning, inadequate teaching materials and content, difficult access to networking facilities, and lack of planning are challenges that can lead to fear of losing the school year and psychological problems for most students. The lack of appropriate tools to assess the fear of losing the school year in students raises the need for a questionnaire with acceptable validity and reliability and in harmony with Iranian culture. This study aimed to evaluate the validity and reliability of the "Fear of School Year Loss" questionnaire in Iranian students.

The present study was methodological, which was conducted to examine the psychometric properties of the "Fear of School Year Loss" questionnaire. The study population included all secondary high school students in Behbahan City, Iran. According to the statistics from the Department of Education, 4606 students were studying in the academic year 2021. Among them, 354 students were selected through a multi–stage cluster random sampling method based on Krejcie and Morgan's table (1970). Hassan and Bao developed the “Fear of School Year Loss” questionnaire in 2020. This questionnaire is a self–report questionnaire and has 5 items and one component. Students determine their agreement or disagreement with each item in the 5–point Likert scale (strongly disagree=1, disagree=2, have no opinion=3, agree=4, and strongly agree=5).

The study showed that in addition to confirming the face and content validity, the construct validity was confirmed with factor analysis. The validation of the questionnaire was confirmed based on the two indicators of the root mean square error of approximation (RMSEA=0.026) and goodness–of–fit index (GFI=0.978). Also, the results of confirmatory factor analysis of the questionnaire showed that all values of factor loads in determining the construct validity were statistically significant (p<0.05). The other fit indices of factor structure results also included the Chi–square index (χ2=5.332), the Chi–square divided by the degree of freedom (χ2/df=0.015), and the comparative fit index (CFI=0.997). Also, the Cronbach alpha coefficient to evaluate the reliability of the questionnaire was 0.73, which indicated the desirable reliability of the scale.

Therefore, the study of the questionnaire's psychometric properties showed that it has the necessary validity and reliability. Also, the questionnaire can be used to assess students' fear of losing their school year in future research.