The Psychometric Properties of School Belonging Scale for Middle School Students

Abstract

This study aimed at developing a valid and reliable scale to determine middle school students’ sense of school belonging. In this respect, the relevant literature on the concept of belonging was reviewed, interviews were conducted with field experts and middle school students to determine items to be included in the scale. An item pool was created based on the findings of these processes. Later, a pilot form was prepared by taking the opinions of 2 field and 2 measurement and evaluation experts so as to ensure that the scale items represent the structure measured. This form was administered to 287 middle school students studying in the 2018-2019 academic year, and the final scale obtained as a result of exploratory factor analysis was applied to 568 middle school students in a different school. For validity evidence, exploratory factor analysis (EFA), confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) and hypothesis test findings; for reliability, findings of Cronbach Alpha and composite reliability coefficients were used. According to the exploratory factor analysis, the scale consisted of 4 factors with 23 items, and the total variance explained was 63.88%. As a result of the second-order confirmatory factor analysis of the obtained structure, the fit indices of the unidimensional model showed that the model was verified. The internal consistency coefficient of the developed model was α = .92 and the composite reliability coefficient was .97. These findings showed that the scale had psychometric properties that could be used in future research.