Development of University Adjustment Scale: Validity and Reliability Studies

The main purpose of the present study is to develop and test the psychometric properties of the University Adjustment Scale (UAS). There were two participant-groups in the study compromising of 712 (430 female, 282 male) and 418 (261 female, 157 male) first-year undergraduate students enrolled in various faculties of a public university in Turkey. The construct validity of the scale was tested by using exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses. The result of the analyses showed that the UAS constituted from four factors including, "academic adjustment", "social adjustment", "personal-emotional adjustment", and "institutional adjustment". Criterion validity study yielded a high correlation between UAS and University Life Scale. The Cronbach alpha coefficients of the four factors were .92 for academic adjustment, .88 for social adjustment, .91 for emotional adjustment, .89 for institutional adjustment, and .94 for the full scale. The test-retests (three weeks interval) reliability coefficients of the factors were also changed between .76 (emotional adjustment) and .88 (institutional adjustment). Consequently, the study findings indicated that the UAS has a very good psychometric properties for using to assess the university adjustment levels of first-year university students.