School guidance services awareness scale (SGSAS): The study of validity and reliability in a sample of Turkish adolescents

Abstract

Students with higher awareness about school guidance services benefit from guidance services more effectively. Studies to identify the awareness levels of students about school guidance services and studies that aim to increase their awareness levels are considered as an important factor that increases the impact of guidance services. Although studies on determining the awareness levels of students about school guidance services and increasing their awareness levels are considered important, it can be stated that there are a limited number of studies in the literature. As a result of the literature conducted in the study, no measurement tool was found to determine the awareness levels of Turkish adolescent students with regard to school guidance services. The aim of this study is to develop a scale to identify awareness levels of students for school guidance services. During the scale development process, primarily a pool of items was formed and views of experts were obtained to ensure the content validity. In order to determine the construct validity of the scale, factor analysis, which is a multivariate statistical analysis type was employed. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses were performed in this process. Exploratory factor analysis was conducted on data obtained from a total of 250 high school students, 143 of whom were female, 107 of whom were male, all of whom were between the ages of 14–19. Correlation analysis and t-test were employed for the item analysis of the scale. The Cronbach alpha reliability coefficient of the scale was calculated as .84. In order to evaluate the construct validity of the model that emerged as a result of the exploratory factor analysis, a confirmatory factor analysis was performed on the data collected from a total of 399 high school students, 263 of whom were female and 136 were male. As a result of this study, a valid and reliable measurement tool with a total of 21 items, consisting of 2 sub-dimensions, one related to the awareness of the necessity of guidance services and the other related to the understanding of guidance services was obtained. This scale is expected to contribute to the work of researchers in their studies related to school guidance services and the efforts of school counsellors who aim to enhance the impact of school guidance services.