The Adaptation of Scale of School as a Caring Community Profile for Secondary School Students into Turkish: Adaptation of School as a Caring Community Scale

Abstract

Schools are social organizations where children came together from different cultures. Creating sense of community is important for schools for the formation of social culture. In schools where sense of community is formed, it is observed that students treat each other with respect, are caring and sharing and have high academic success, and rates for grade repetition and dropping out are low. The purpose of this study is to adapt The Scale of School as a Caring Community Profile into Turkish and perform validity and reliability analyses. The study group of this research conducted consists of 478 secondary school students from public primary education schools in Ankara city center during the 2011-2012 academic year. Selection of study group is predicated on two criteria (analysis unit), the school type (public secondary school) and the districts where schools are located. Turkish translation of Lickona and Davidson’s (2003) “School as a Caring Community Profile” scale is used as a data-gathering tool. Validity of language was screened in the first section of the research and was followed by receiving expert opinion on content validity. The scale was applied to 478 students after the first section was completed. Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) was conducted to confirm whether or not the scale’s three-factor structure forms a valid structure. Based on the findings the scale has high construct validity and reliability coefficients.