Analysis of primary school students' adjustment to school: Scale development study

In this study, it is aimed to develop a valid and reliable scale to measure elementary school students' level of adjustment to school and to examine the scores obtained from this scale in terms of different variables. In the process of developing the scale, firstly, written opinions of classroom teachers were obtained about compatible and incompatible student characteristics. Based on these views and literature, an item pool of 37 items was created. After the expert opinions, the number of items decreased to 30. The 30 item trial form was applied to 369 primary school students. As a result of the exploratory factor analysis performed to determine the construct validity, a structure consisting of 16 items and three factors was obtained. These factors are named as "Academic Adjustment", " Rules Adjustment" and "Peer Adjustment". The final form was applied to 248 primary school students to conduct a confirmatory factor analysis. The Cronbach alpha coefficient of the scale was 0.91, and the test-retest reliability coefficient was determined as 0.92. As a result of the analysis, a scale with three sub-dimensions and a total of 16 items, whose validity and reliability was proven as a result of the analysis, was developed to measure the adaptation of primary school students to school. Comparisons were made on the total scores of the Primary School Students from the School Adjustment Scale according to the gender and class of the participants. While the scores of the participants from the School Adjustment Scale do not show a significant difference according to gender, they differ according to the class. Keywords: Primary School, Adjustment, Social Adjustment, Peer Adjustment, Academic Adjustment, Rules Adjustment