Development and Validation of a Scale to Assess School Factors Contributing to School Refusal Behavior

Abstract

School refusal behavior is a serious issue in Pakistan which has remained unnoticed. In order to understand the intensity of the issue it is important to understand the school related factors for school refusal. There was no tool available to study these factors in cultural context of Pakistan. The aim of this study was to develop a scale to measure different dimensions of school factors involved in school refusal behavior among middle school students. Both qualitative and quantitative data was collected for this purpose. Purposive sampling technique was used to recruit the sample of 260 middle school teachers. A series of exploratory factor analysis was conducted and four dimensions were extracted which were further reduced to three final including school environment, teachers’ classroom management and teacher-student relationship dimensions during confirmatory factor analysis. The scale showed high internal consistency and reliability. The Cronbach alpha reliability of the 26 items (five -Likert point) scale was 0.74. This scale will help to study all aspects of school factors contributing to school refusal behavior in Pakistan which was not available before.