School refusal reason inventory for children and adolescents: development, reliability and validity

Objective To develop school refusal reason inventory(SRRI)for children and adolescents in China and assess its reliability and validity. Methods The primary SSRI was made based on clinical interviews and literatures. Pretest was carried out in a small sample from a clinic. Then the final SSRI was developed after qualitative analysis and item analysis. SRRI, the Screen for Child Anxiety Related Emotional Disorders(SCARED) and Child Depression Inventory(CDI) were administered to school refusers from 7 schools in Shenyang. All the schools were selected from Shenyang City and its countryside by cluster sampling. Some of the students were retested after one month. Descriptive statistics and exploratory factor analysis were carried out to examine the reliability and validity of SRRI based on all the data. Results Item analysis indicated correlation coefficients between all the items and the total marks were higher than 0.3, and they were significant. All the critical ratios of the items were higher than 0.3. The 43 items were divided into six factors (educational modality, factor of teachers, relationship with classmates, separated anxiety, study attitude and study environment) by exploratory factor analysis. The factor loading values were 0.372~0.848. The cronbach's α of each factor was 0.827, 0.831, 0.759, 0.623, 0.821 and 0.808. Retest reliability was 0.644(P<0.01). Its correlation coefficient with SCARED was 0.452 and 0.548 with CDI. Conclusion According to Chinese cultural back ground, the SSRI corresponds with psychometric indexes. There are good reliability and validity. It is helpful to understand the reasons of school refusal behavior in children and adolescents. Key words: School refusal; Children and adolescent; Development; Reliability; Validity