A Psychometric Analysis of a Scale for Measuring Girl Students' Beliefs and Coping Behaviors

This correlational research aimed to do a proficiency test of a psychometric analysis of a scale for measuring girl students' beliefs and coping behaviors with a non-experimental method. The population was all girl students in Tehran and 398 girls were selected by the convenience sampling as the sample. The data were gathered by the scale for measuring beliefs and coping behaviors and a short-form religious coping scale. The statistical methods of exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis were applied to determine the factor validity of the scale for measuring beliefs and coping behaviors, and Cronbach's alpha was used to calculate the internal consistency. Moreover, construct validity was measured using the correlation coefficient between the scale for measuring beliefs and coping behaviors and the religious coping scale. The results of analyzing the main components using Varimax rotation method showed that the scale for measuring beliefs and coping behaviors consists of four factors of structure, the sense of social belonging, the personal relationship with higher power, and world-view, and the indicators of confirmatory factor analysis (based on the LISREL software) confirmed these four factors. The results of the correlation between the dimensions of beliefs and coping behaviors and the dimensions of positive and negative religious coping experimentally confirmed the construct validity of measuring beliefs and coping behaviors, and the internal consistency coefficients of the scale were desirable. In sum, according to the findings of the research, this scale is a valid tool to measure the role of religion in the face of stressful events of life among girl students.