A new scale to investigate university students’ problems: The development and psychometric properties of the problem field scale for university students

The aim of the present study was to develop a new brief scale so as to determine university students’ problems. Additionally, it was aimed to explore the psychometric properties including factor structure, reliability and validity analysis of the Problem Field Scale (PFS). The data were collected from 218 university students. The age of the participants ranged between 17 and 25 years, with a mean age of 19.9. The results of the study suggested four-factor subscales for PFS. Factor structure of PFS was examined by means of exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis. In general, the PFS demonstrated adequate model fit, showed strong internal consistency and correlated with the PFS subscales. In total, the findings support that the PFS is a valid and reliable measure of determining university students’ problems. This measurement can be considered crucial in the identification of university students’ problems so that prevention and helping strategies can be developed to handle serious problems.