The Construct Validity of the Self Description Questionnaire on High School Students in Kenya

Abstract

This study investigated the structural equivalence of the Self Description Questionnaire (SDQ) in relation to Kenyan high school students. A total of 1,990 students from two same-sex boarding schools participated. Confirmatory factor analysis revealed the overall model fit the data well. However, an examination of the individual factors revealed that only 3 of the 13 had all items loading well. These low loading values may be attributed to a combination of cultural differences between Kenyan children and the Western children on whom the scale was initially normed as well as to the complexity of the sentence structures of some items, which may have been difficult for the non-native English speaking students to fully understand. The findings from this study have important implications for those considering the use of the SDQ in African countries. The lack of construct equivalence for some of the subscales may be due in part to the use of colloquialisms in some of the items, and to the differing nature of religious beliefs in the African culture, when compared with those more common in the west. Thus, care needs to be taken when using the SDQ in these differing cultural contexts.