Development of Emotional and Behavioral Problems Scale for Adolescents

Abstract

The major objective of this study was to develop an indigenous tool to assess emotional and behavioral problems for adolescents in Pakistan. The study consisted on two phases where in the Phase I, an indigenous scale was developed by generating the item pool of 136 items on the basis of semi-structured interviews (n = 28) with adolescents following internalizing/ externalizing problems framework by Achenbach and Edelbrock (1991). The interviews were analyzed by using thematic analysis technique and consequently 136 items were formulated on the basis of extracted themes. The scale comprising 136 items was administered in try out study after the content validity estimated by the experts from relevant field. In phase 2 the scale was administered on the sample of 1120 adolescents from government and private educational institutes for the purpose of establishing the psychometric properties of the scale. Exploratory factor analysis (n = 560) was fixed at 8 factors structure including 54 items. Confirmatory factor analysis (n = 560) resulted in 8 confirmed factors consisting of 32 items. The Cronbach alpha of the scale was α (.92). It is concluded that the locally developed scale can be used to screen out the adolescents with emotional and behavioral problems so that they can refer to further assessment or counselling services.