Abstract

This study aims at developing a valid and reliable scale to determine primary 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 primary 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 to ensure that the scale items represent the structure measured. This form was administered to 254 primary school students studying in the 2018-2019 academic year, and the final scale was obtained as a result of exploratory factor analysis was applied to 287 primary school students in a different school. For validity evidence, exploratory factor analysis (EFA), confirmatory factor analysis (CFA), convergent and discriminant analysis and item analysis; for reliability, findings of Cronbach Alpha and composite reliability coefficients were used. According to the exploratory factor analysis, the scale consisted of 3 factors with 13 items, and the total variance explained was 52.57%. As a result of the second-order confirmatory factor analysis of the obtained structure, the fit indices of the model showed that it was verified. The internal consistency coefficient of the developed model was α = .92 and the composite reliability coefficient was .93. These findings showed that the scale had psychometric properties to be used in future research.

Key words: School belonging, primary school students, scale development, construct validity