Hadi Samadieh; Hossein kareshki; Seyed Amir Aminyazdi; Elahe Hejazi
Abstract
The sense of belonging to university is linked to numerous aspects of the psycho-social health of students. However, there are many ambiguities in the conceptualization and measurement of this construct. The few tools designed in the field of higher education largely assess the sense of belonging and ...
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The sense of belonging to university is linked to numerous aspects of the psycho-social health of students. However, there are many ambiguities in the conceptualization and measurement of this construct. The few tools designed in the field of higher education largely assess the sense of belonging and the measurement of the components of belonging to the university has received less attention in previous studies. The current study aimed to develop and validate the "Students' Sense of Belonging to University Scale (SSBUS)." In a correlational and tool development design, 345 students of Ferdowsi University of Mashhad were selected in the first stage and 477 students of University of Birjand were selected in the second stage by available sampling method. The results of exploratory factor analysis in the first stage showed four factors with 49.72% variance explanation, which included the components of interaction with professors, interaction with peers, university climate and self-esteem. The results of confirmatory factor analysis indicated that the four-factor model had a good fit, and the Cronbach's alpha coefficient of the subscales was reported in the range of 0.75-0.90. In addition, other analyses provided evidence to support the internal consistency, convergent validity, and divergent validity of the sense of belonging scale. It was found that each of the dimensions of this scale was significantly related to the measures of commitment to the university, social-emotional loneliness, satisfaction with life, depression and agentic engagement. In addition, the results of the retest coefficient of the subscales were in the range of 0.64-0.74. According to the findings of the present research, the students' sense of belonging to university scale has desirable psychometric properties and can be used as a valid instrument.
Shiva Zarezadeh Kheibari; Seyed Amir Amin Yazdi; Shahrbanoo Aali; Hossein kareshki
Abstract
The visuospatial development is one of the most important foundations of development, since it plays the role of the primary function of all learning and communication, and forms the mental representations of the outside world. On the other hand, this development simultaneously contains spatial information ...
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The visuospatial development is one of the most important foundations of development, since it plays the role of the primary function of all learning and communication, and forms the mental representations of the outside world. On the other hand, this development simultaneously contains spatial information and directs all movements in space. Measurement of this development and its various dimensions is vital in the early years of life, since with this information we can estimate the visuospatial capacity of the child and examine the change of this basic capacity during life span. The aim of the present study was to provide psychometric properties for the visuospatial development questionnaire (Harry Wachs, 2014) for use in Iran. A questionnaire was filled out on 348 preschool children in Mashhad that were selected randomly by multistage stratified sampling method and psychometric indices were calculated using statistical software. The findings showed that the questionnaire had a satisfactory content and structure validity and also reliability. The results of the confirmatory factor analysis also showed that the structure of the questionnaire has an acceptable fit with the data. These factors were named in accordance with the main research, body awareness and sense; location of body in space; relation of object to self, other objects and people; conservation of space; Visual-logical reasoning; Representational thought; their coefficients of internal consistency were 0.83, 0.79, 0.67, 0.80, 0.72 and 0.61, respectively. These results show that the Visuopatial development Questionnaire can be used as a tool for measuring the concept of the visuospatial development in Iran.
