ROMANIAN TRANSLATION AND LINGUISTIC VALIDATION OF THE CHILDREN AND ADOLESCENT SOCIAL SUPPORT SCALE (CASSS)

A growing body of research is focusing on identifying protective factors that may increase the chances of positive psychosocial functioning in adolescents facing adversity. Previous studies documented the role of perceived social support in risky and aggressive behavior and the need for psychometric instruments to assess this variable. The present study aims to validate at linguistic level the Romanian version of Children and Adolescent Social Support Scale (CASSS; Malecki, Demaray, & Elliott, 2000). CASSS is a 60-item measure divided into five subscales, each subscale corresponding to a specific component of the social network (parents, teachers, friends, classmates and school). The scale was piloted for content and general linguistic clarity, following standard methods of linguistic validation. Participants (secondary school students, 13-19 years) completed on-line the Romanian translated version of CASSS. Two weeks later, students filled in the original English version of the scale. A Wilcoxon signed rank test was conducted to determine whether there was a statistically significant difference between the original and translated versions of the instrument. Subsequently, Spearman correlation coefficients were calculated. Psychometric properties of the translated version of CASSS and recommendations are further discussed.