Revision and reliability and validity evaluation of School Teenagers' Life Skills Scale

Objective To revise the School Teenagers' Life Skills Scale (STLSS) and to evaluate its reliability and validity for the application of the instrument among Chinese students.Methods Two qualitative interviews,item analysis,and exploratory factor analysis were adopted to revise the STLSS.Reliability and validity of the STLSS were evaluated with a survey conducted among 4 528 students recruited from 24 junior or senior high schools in Beijing,Tianjin,and Chongqing municipality,Liaoning and Guangdong province,and Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region from October 2013 to January 2014.Results The revised STLSS was composed of 21 items for 5 dimensions including thinking ability (5 items),self-perception ability (5 items),efficient communication-interpersonal relationship ability (5 items),emotion adjustment-stress coping ability (3 items) and empathy ability (3 items).Exploratory factor analysis revealed 5 common factors of the scalse,which can explain 52.672% of the total variance,and all loadings and communalities of the 5 factors were greater than 0.40 after being rotated.The correlation coefficients of every item to its dimension were ranged from 0.35 to 0.84 (P<0.001) and the item discrimination of the scale was good.For the revised scale,the overall test-retest reliability was 0.74 (P<0.01);the split-half reliability was 0.79;the overall Cronbach's alpha was 0.82 and all the Cronbach's alpha of every subscales were greater than 0.68.Confirmatory factor analysis results showed a good fitness of the revised scale (χ²=1291.51,P<0.01,goodness-of-fit indexGFI=0.95,adjusted goodness-of-fit indexAGFI=0.93,root mean square error of approximationRMSEA=0.052;incremental fit indexIFI=0.91,comparative fit indexCFI=0.91,parsimony normed fit indexPNFI=0.76,parsimony goodness of fit IndexPGFI=0.73).The correlation coefficients of the overall scale and the subscales were all greater than 0.50 (P<0.01);the total score and the subscales scores of the scale were positively correlated with the score of the Internal and External Source Control Scale (r=0.53-0.71,P<0.01),and also correlated with the Internal and External Locus of Control Scale (r=-0.26-0.43,P<0.01).Conclusion The reliability and validity of the revised School Teenagers' Life Skills Scale meet the requirements of psychometrics among Chinese high school students and the scale could be adopted to assess Chinese school teenager's life skills.