Satisfaction with social support and adaptation to the university: psychometric properties

Abstract

The objective of this study was to verify the psychometric properties of the Satisfaction Scale with Social Support and the Adaptation to Higher Education Questionnaire with scores of Brazilian university students. The participants were 300 students from various courses and periods, 150 of public universities and 150 of private universities. The collected data were examined in the structural equation modeling environment, submitted to confirmatory factor analysis, multi-group confirmatory factor analysis, and multivariate multiple linear regression analysis. The results indicated a very good fit for the re-specified model of Satisfaction with Social Support and invariance between groups of public and private institutions. The Satisfaction Scale with Social Suport examination revealed strong evidence of validity and reliability for the measure, corroborating previous studies. The re-specified model of academic adaptation presented an adjustment that ranged from poor to good. The current analysis of the Adaptation to Higher Education Questionnaire recommends that future tests with larger samples be performed to confirm their factorial structure. In the multivariate regression, small predictor relationships were revealed between some dimensions of social support and academic adaptation. However, the result of this type of test is strongly dependent on the consistency of the measures involved.