Primary compilation, reliability and validity evaluation of mental health development scale for primary and secondary school students

Objective To compile a mental health development scale for primary and secondary school students(PSMHS) and to evaluate the reliability and validity of the scale.Methods Chinese Cognitive Ability Scale(CCAS)was used to evaluate the cognitive development domains in the compiled scale and the items pool was set according to theoretical conceptions and literature researches.Totally 7500 pupils and secondary school students in Hubei province were administered with the compiled scale to validate the rationality of the scale through item analysis, exploratory factor analysis, and principal component analysis.Results The students' mental development was assessed via measurements of 5 domains including cognition, personality, emotion, will, and self-consciousness development.The ultimately compiled primary school students' mental health development scale(PMHC) was composed of 67 items and the secondary school students' mental health development scale(SMHC) was consisted of 65 items.The Cronbach's α coefficient and the split-half reliability of the PMHC were 0.905 and 0.850;the Cronbach's α coefficient and the split-half reliability of the subscales between each dimensions ranged between 0.720-0.757 and 0.650-0.770.The Cronbach's α coefficient and the split-half reliability of the SMHC were 0.919 and 0.812;the Cronbach's α coefficient and the split-half reliability between each dimensions ranged between 0.752-0.837 and 0.632-0.752.The results suggested good reliability of the two scales complied.The range of factor loading for PMHC was 0.475-0.792 and that for SMHC was 0.515-0.763;the correlation coefficients between the scores of overall scale and domain scales ranged from 0.699 to 0.903 and the correlation coefficients between the scores of every domain scale ranged from 0.356 to 0.670 for SMHC and PMHC, suggesting the compiled PSMHS had good validity.Conclusion The PSMHS with good reliability and validity was primarily compiled.