Exploratory and Confirmatory Factor Analysis of the Social Skills Scale for Young Immigrants

Abstract

The integration of young immigrants in the societies that host them highlights the need for the intervention of social workers to facilitate their adaptation and inclusion from an individualized diagnosis of their needs. The development of social skills in the immigrants is one of the main ways to make that integration happen, and therefore its diagnosis is fundamental. However, at present, there are no valid and reliable instruments that take into account the sociocultural factors that surround young immigrants for the evaluation of their social skills. It is for this reason that the purpose of this study was to adapt and validate a current and useful instrument for the diagnosis of such social skills to young immigrants welcomed in Spain. To do this, it was started on the choice and adaptation of The Social Skills Scale (Escala de Habilidades Sociales). Subsequently, the questionnaire was submitted to concurrent, predictive, and nomological validation processes. The construct validity was carried out by factor analysis first and second order to confirm the hierarchical structure of the scale. After validation with Exploratory Factor Analysis (n = 330), the structure was checked, and the model was later adjusted with Confirmatory Factor Analysis (n = 568) by means of structural equations. The reliability and internal consistency of the instrument was also tested with values in all dimensions above 0.8. It is concluded that this new instrument has 29 items and 6 dimensions, has acceptable validity and reliability, and can be used for the diagnosis of Social Skills in Young Immigrants.

Development of Local Potential-Based Environmental Care Instrument and its Ability to Reveal Students' Caring Attitudes at Genders and Grades

“…The pre-analysis of EFA used Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin and Bartlett's Test of Sphericity scores (Hair et al, 2010;Chan, L. L., & Idris, 2017;Surastina, 2018), while the EFA acceptance criteria used a loading factor value > 0.3 (Desstya et al, 2019) and Eigenvalue >1 (Yong, A. G., & Pearce, 2013). The fit criteria for the EFA were tested through the CFA using the Goodness of fit index (GFI), Root mean square error of approximation (RMSEA), Tucker-Lewis Index (TLI), and Comparative Fit 616 Instruction, October 2022 • Vol.15, No.4 Index (CFI) criteria (Sun, 2005;Zainudin et al, 2019;Tomé-Fernández et al, 2020;Tungkunanan, 2020;Siewseng et al, 2020).…”

Correlational study on cyberbullying and social abilities in intercultural teenagers

“…In this research, a correlational design is carried out, where the aim is to know the relationship among the six dimensions of the Social Skills Scale for Young Immigrants (SSSYI) (Tomé-Fernández et al, 2020) and the three categories of each of the subscales (cybervictims and cyberaggressors) that make up the Cyberbullying Scale for students with Cultural and Religious Diversity (CSCRD) (Tomé-Fernández et al, 2019). In addition to the influence of the variables age, gender, race, ethnicity, and religion on the analyzed cyberbullying.…”

“…The instrument has a reliability of α = 0.90. The second instrument used was the SSSYI (Tomé-Fernández et al, 2020). The internal consistency indexes ranged between 0.81 and 0.89.…”

“…And the SSSYI is an instrument that is structured in two parts; on the one hand sociodemographic variables, such as age, sex, province, and nationality. And, on the other hand, it consists of a 29item Likert scale with four response options ranging from never (1) to always (4) (Tomé-Fernández et al, 2020). The application of both questionnaires had an average duration of between 20 and 40 min.…”

Nationality as an Influential Variable with Regard to the Social Skills and Academic Success of Immigrant Students

“…Given this situation, the main purpose of this research is to expand the existing scientific knowledge on the variables that influence the development of social skills of immigrant students during online learning and to know how the most influential variable in the development of social skills of these students affects their academic success. For this purpose, the Social Skills Scale for Young Immigrants (SSSYI) was applied, an instrument that is considered a perfect candidate for assessing the social skills of young immigrants, making it the only instrument that takes into account the linguistic and comprehension peculiarities of the sample [3]. To test the influence of the variables of age, gender, nationality and place of residence on the probability of social skills development, ANOVA and regression analyses were performed on the input dataset, as these analyses are recommended for the treatment of parametric data [4].…”