Development of affective dissonance scale for adolescents

Pages: 663-669
Pramod Kumar (DRDO Scientist, Selection Centre East, Allahabad, Uttar Pradesh)
The aim of this study is to develop a tool to measure affective dissonance (AD) of adolescents. The sample consists of 100 (Initial try-out) and 250 (Final try-out) respondents, age ranging from 13 to 18 and class ranging from 7th to 12th. Initially 50 items were constructed, and 48 items of 80 % unanimity by the judges were kept. Each item was followed by six likely emotions as alternatives containing three positive affect (PA) and three negative affect (NA), each one of which has to be rated on 5-point rating scale. With an eigenvalue of greater than 2.0 and factor loading of more than 0.45, factor analysis reveals two factor structure of the test. It reduced total number of items from 48 to 28. The first factor- Personal Affective Dissonance (PAD) consists of 18 items and second factor- Interpersonal Affective Dissonance (IPAD)is comprised of 10 items. The Cronbach’s Alpha reliability is 0.89 with all 48 items and 0.90 with 28 items. Besides face and content validity as judged by experts with 80 % unanimity, the construct validity of the scale has been worked out by calculating the correlation of different sub-scales of the AD with total scale score. The correlations are ranging from 0.77 to 0.90. With its so high reliability and validity, the scale ensures greater significance and wide application in the measurement of AD of adolescents.