The School Connection Scale: A Factor Analysis

An individual's feeling of connection with a social system has been viewed by diverse traditions as an important predictor of social behavior. While some of these theoretical traditions have conceptualized and assessed a feeling of connection as a global phenomenon, more recent work has focused on the development of measures for separate contexts in which connection occurs. Using a diverse sample of 1,739 adolescents, this study examined an original scale designed specifically to assess youth's feeling of connection with school. Intercorrelations among scales were factor analyzed to examine the structural validity of elements developed from the literature and focus groups of students. The results yield for the School Connection Scale three subscales on which scores were reliable and valid and account for 49.5% of the variance.