The academic adjustment scale: Measuring the adjustment of permanent resident or sojourner students

In this paper we developed and validated the Academic Adjustment Scale (AAS) – a new scale for measuring academic adjustment, which was developed with a focus on student sojourners who temporarily relocate to a new culture for the purpose of tertiary education, but also is validated for use with local students. Exploratory factor analysis (Study 1) demonstrated that the AAS comprises 9-items that highly and accurately factor onto the three hypothesized subscales: academic lifestyle, academic achievement, and academic motivation. We controlled for acquiescent response styles, and then verified the structure using Confirmatory Factor Analyses (Studies 1–2). Evidence of the validity (convergent, discriminant, criterion, known-groups, and face validities; Study 2), and evidence of reliability (internal consistency: Studies 1–3; test-retest reliability: Study 3) suggest stable psychometric properties for this new measure. In summary, we provide evidence for the validity and reliability of the AAS in permanent resident and student sojourner samples, and present self-report findings by sojourner students that this scale is preferred to existing academic adjustment scales.