Adaptation of teacher assessment of social behavior scale to Turkish culture

Bu çalışmada çocukların sosyal davranış özelliklerini belirlemek amacıyla kullanılan ve Cassidy ve Asher (1992) tarafından geliştirilen “Sosyal Davranış Öğretmen Değerlendirmesi” ölçeğinin uyarlama çalışması için öncelikle gerekli izinler alınmış ve sonrasında geçerlik ve güvenilirlik analizleri yapılmıştır. Araştırmaya Muş Merkez’deki ilköğretim okullarının anasınıflarında öğrenim gören 141 çocuk ve bu çocukların 23 öğretmeni katılmıştır. Ölçeğin kapsam ve anlaşılırlılığı için, ölçek 7 alan uzmanına ve yapılan çevirinin uygunluğu için de 2 İngilizce alan uzmanına incelenmek üzere verilmiştir. Ölçeğin özgün formu ve Türkçe taslak formu üzerinde eşdeğerlik sağlandıktan sonra katılımcılar üzerinde uygulama yapılmıştır. Ölçeğin faktör yapısı AFA (Açımlayıcı Faktör Analizi) ve Doğrulayıcı Faktör Analizi ile belirlenmiştir. AFA sonucunda; bulunan üç faktörün açıkladığı varyans % 79,97 olarak hesaplanmıştır. Doğrulayıcı Faktör Analizi sonucunda sınanan faktör yapısının gerçek verilerle iyi uyum gösterdiği doğrulanmıştır. Ölçeğin güvenilirliliği için iç tutarlılığa bakılmıştır. Bu amaçla Cronbach Alfa .89 olarak hesaplanmıştır. Oluşturulan alt-üst % 27’lik grupların madde ortalama puanları arasında fark t-testi ile hesaplanarak desteklenmiştir Bu analizler doğrultusunda ölçeğin, geçerli ve güvenilir olduğu kabul edilmiştir.A number of standardized teacher rating instruments have been developed to assess child behavior in the school setting. Some of these measure were designed primarily for clinical purpose, to identify problem behaviors associated with conduct disorder, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), or other related conditions. Teacher Assessment of Social Behavior scale is the one of most popular scale which is used at non-clinical researches. In the world literature wide range of scales about social behaviors are developed, in Turkey there are almost no valid and reliable teacher based scales that can be used at present. That's why it seems considerably important that adapting new scales for social behaviors be generated. The purpose of this study is to adapt a valid and reliable scale that is considered necessary to determine social behaviors of preschool and elementary school's students. Method Working Group The working group consists of 141 children, 67 females and 74 males, who are at the age of six from 15 primary school's 40 preschool departments in Muş City and their 40 preschool teachers. Instrument Children's social behavior in the peer group was assessed with the TASB (Cassidy & Asher, 1992). Teachers were asked to rate children on four behavioral dimensions: prosocial, aggressive, shy/withdrawn, and disruptive. Each dimension was assessed using three items, for a total of 12 items In order to minimize potential dependency in the ratings teachers provided for the different items, each item was presented on a different page. On each page a roster of all students' names appeared underneath the item, with a 5-point scale next to each name. The scale ranged from a - 1 - (-very uncharacteristic-) to a -5- (-very characteristic-). Cronbach Alpha was ,91 for aggressive, ,89 for disruptive, ,88 for prosocial, , 62 for shy/withdrawn in Cassidy and Asher's (1992) study. In Rudolph and Clark (2001) calculated as the mean of the three items on the Prosocial, Withdrawn, Aggressive and Disruptive subscales. Because the Aggressive and Disruptive subscales were highly correlated. TASB was prepared through these stages: 1. First it has been done some correspondence with authors, the writer of the scale, in terms of its adaptation to Turkish. After getting permission, TASB was translated. In this scope, this scale was translated into Turkish by two English Language Experts and the researcher. The items that were translated into Turkish are edited by a field expert and then translated into English again by another English Language expert. Each translation was looked for their meaning correspondence by compared with each other and it was determined that there was no difference between Turkish and English forms. The scale translated into Turkish was checked by a Turkish Language expert and it was redesigned in accordance with the suggestions of the experts. Finally, the researcher overviewed first its English then Turkish meaning correspondence and did necessary editions. 2. Whether the expressions in the scale were suitable for Turkish Culture and were adequate for measuring required characters were checked in the light of the views of nine experts working in the area of Child Development and Preschool Education. The experts were asked to evaluate each item in the scale as coherent or incoherent and to make suggestions in order to improve the items. Although the forms were sent to nine field experts, it couldn't be taken feedback from two experts; therefore, the evaluation of the scale was done according to the views of the seven field experts. Since all experts marked the TASB as -Coherent-, the evaluation process wasn't done. 3. In order to identify intelligibility of the texts and to determine possible potential breakdowns based on the application of the scales, pre-pilot application first was done to the randomly selected eleven children at the age of six and their teachers (5) from Muş Yavuz Selim and Tandoğan Primary Schools in the scope of validity and reliability studies of the scales. No problem defined about TASB scale's items. Data Analysis For the analysis of data on the scale SPSS 13,0 and LISREL 8,80 were utilized. Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) and Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) were employed to determine validity. As reliability analysis Alpha Cronbach Coefficient, the item-total correlations, and the differences between mean scores of upper 27% and lover 27% groups were examined. Findings Exploratory Factor Analysis was conducted to determine the construct validity of Teacher Assessment of Social Behaviors Scale by using principle Axis Factoring analysis which revealed three factors structure. The KMO value of the questionnaire was above ,87 and the meaningfulness value of Bartlett test was .00. According to this finding, it is possible to state that the data is appropriate for factor analysis. The evaluation of results from the factor analysis was done based on the factor loadings. The items' factor loadings ranged between ,66-,96. Explained variance of three factors was computed as % 79,97. it is observed that factor 1 was explaining 46, 74 % of total variance, factor 2 was explaining 21 % of total variance and factor 3 was explaining 12,08 % of total variance. It was found that all items in the scale can differentiate the subgroup and upper group for the school adaptation (p>.01) and item-total correlation coefficient is .41-.80 (p>.01).Confirmatory Factor Analysis's was calculated for confirming the Scale's three factors. Confirmatory Factor Analysis results are as fallows: χ299,26 (N141, sd51, p,00), (χ2/sd)1,95, GFI ,89, AGFI,84, SRMR .07 ve RMSEA .08. Confirmatory Factor Analysis's results confirmed that tested data have well accordance with the ideal data. These findings indicate that three factors structure of Teacher Assessment of Social Behaviors Scale has a valid structure. Cronbach Alpha reliability coefficient was found .89 for the scale. it is observed that, Cronbach Alfa internal coefficients for factor 1, factor 2 and Factor 3 scores were ,95, ,94 and ,74. As a result of these analyses, this scale is accepted to be reliable and valid. Discussion At the result of the study, a valid and reliable scale that is considered necessary to determine social behaviors of preschool and elementary school's students was adapted to Turkish Culture. As further studies, social behavior problems can be determined by using this scale. It is expected a framework for social competence will emerge as a result of studies which will use this scale