Adaptation of General Belongingness Scale into Turkish for Adolescents: Validity and Reliability Studies

Abstract

The current research aims to adapt the General Belongingness Scale (GBS), developed by Malone, Pillow, and Osman (2012), into Turkish for adolescents and to conduct the validity and reliability studies for it. Ages of the participants, a total of 567 adolescents including 274 males (48.3%) and 293 females (51.7%) ranged between 14 and 18 (average age= 15.76). For the construct validity of GBS, exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses were conducted. Factor analyses results indicated that the scale included two factors as it is in the original form. Factor loadings of the items varied between .55 and .84. To provide validity of the GBS, Pearson Correlation Coefficents between belongingness and loneliness (r= -.64), life satisfaction (r= .36), attachment to parents (varied between r= .21 and r= .39) and attachment to peers (r= .33 and r= .39) were computed and they were all significant. Cronbach’s alpha coefficient calculated for the scale reliability was .76 for acceptance/inclusion sub-dimension, .85 for rejection/exclusion and .81 for overall scale. Test-retest reliability of the GBS was run with 97 students, and it was found as .80. The research findings indicated that the GBS was a valid and reliable instrument to assess general belongingness for Turkish adolescents.