Psychometric analysis of the Farsi version of the attribution style questionnaire among Iranian university students

Aim: Purpose of study was to investigate the psychometric properties of the attribution style questionnaire among Iranian university students.
In this correlational study, 270 students (93 male, 177 female) were selected from among 6000 university students from the Islamic Azad University (Central Tehran branches). Selection was made using multistage sampling and participants completed attribution style questionnaire Peterson, Semel, Beayer, Abramson, Metalsky & Seligman (1982) and achievement emotions questionnaire Pekrun, Goetz & Perry, 2005. Confirmatory factor analysis was used to compute the attribution style questionnaire's factorial validity.
Results of confirmatory factor analysis confirmed a three factor structure consisting of the internal/external, stable/unstable and specific/universal dimensions for positive and negative situations. A positive correlation between adaptive causal attributions with positive achievement emotions and a negative correlation between non-adaptive causal attributions with negative achievement emotions provided first hand evidence of the attribution Style questionnaire's convergent validity. Internal consistency for the scales of the attribution style questionnaire was acceptable.
In sum, these findings provide evidence for the validity and reliability of the attribution style questionnaire as an instrument to measure causal attributions among Iranian university students.