Development & Psychometric Evaluation of the Child-Adolescent Teasing Scale
Objective: This study's purpose was to develop and psychometrically evaluate the CATS in middle-school youth.
Design: methodological
Population, Sample, Setting: The initial study population (n=708) was middle-school youth from Massachusetts, Mississippi, Montana, New Mexico, and North Carolina. The final sample (n=546) for this psychometric evaluation had no missing data on the CATS. This sample was 11-14 years; 53% female; 73% white, 11% Latino/Hispanic, 10% Black/African American and 6.5% other racial/ethnic heritage. Over 68% reported grades of mostly A's and B's.
Concepts and Variables Studied: Initially, 70 items were derived from the previously described focus groups to measure the four major constructs underpinning the CATS. These reflected Teasing about: a) Physical Appearance (n=18)), b) Personality & Behavior (n=17), c) Family & Environment (n=17), and d) School (n=18).
Methods: The instrument was designed, pilot-tested, and then administered to 6-8th grade students.
Findings: The Cronbach's alpha internal consistency reliability, computed on the 70-items CATS, was .95. Only items with item-total correlations > .50 were retained for subsequent analyses. The 34 retained CATS items were subjected to principal components analysis with varimax rotation and Kaiser normalization. Eight initial factors with eigenvalues > 1 emerged, accounting for 65.2% of variance. A four-factor solution was then specified and accounted for 51.2% of variance. Factor 1, Personality & Behavior Teasing (14 items; Cronbach's alpha, .91), explained 18.4% of variance; Factor 2, School-Related Teasing (9 items; Cronbach's alpha, .84); explained 12.4%; Factor 3, Family & Environment Teasing (7 items; Cronbach's alpha, .84) accounted for 11.8% of variance; and Factor 4, Physical Size Teasing (2 items, Cronbach's alpha, .85) accounted for 8.6% of variance.
Conclusions & Implications: The 34 items CATS subscales demonstrated sufficient internal consistency reliability and construct (factorial) validity for use in subsequent research with middle-school children.
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