Measurement of alienation among adolescents: construct validity of three scales on powerlessness, meaninglessness and social isolation.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Psychological alienation is an important concept in the study of adolescents' health and behavior but no gold standard for measuring alienation among adolescents exists. There is a need for new scales with high validity for use in adolescent health and social research. The purpose of the present study was to develop and validate alienation scales in accordance with Seeman's conceptualization of alienation focusing on three independent variants specifically relevant in adolescent health research: powerlessness, meaninglessness and social isolation.

Methods

Cross-sectional data from 3083 adolescents aged 13 to 15 years from the Danish contribution to the cross-national study Health Behaviour in School-aged Children (HBSC) were used. We identified and developed items

SUBMITTER: Rayce SB 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5934919 | biostudies-literature | 2017

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature