Reliability, Validity, and Cultural Adaptation of the Multidimensional Scale of Life Skills in Late Childhood with Upper Primary School Students in Afghanistan and Pakistan

Abstract

Life skills, also known as psychosocial and non-cognitive skills, are critical to children's development and well-being as they progress through early life courses but difficult to measure. The present study aims at validating a culturally adapted version of the Multidimensional Scale of Life Skills in Late Childhood in the context of primary school of rural Afghanistan and Pakistan. The instrument was face validated by six of the authors. The scale was found accessible to students' grades three to five despite its original target of late childhood. Content validation was also carried out by the authors to evaluate the representativeness of the scale items for the various dimensions of life skills. The items were found relevant for the seven dimensions of life skills considered. The scale also showed overall good internal consistency, acceptable test retest and inter rate consistence and high responsiveness. Exploratory factorial analysis showed that 4 and 3 factors explained 40% and 37% of the total variance respectively in Pakistan and Afghanistan.