Adaptation of The Walker-McConnell Scale of Social Competence and School Adjustment to the Czech environment
Abstract
There are insufficient suitable methods for assessing pupils' social competence in the Czech Republic. The study aims to verify the psychometric properties of the instrument called The Walker-McConnell Scale of Social Competence and School Adjustment and initiate the process of adapting it to the Czech environment.
The instrument is intended for teachers (or other teaching staff) who record their observations of the frequency of pupils' given manifestations of social behaviour. The scale was answered by 15 class teachers and 15 teaching assistants who completed it for 307 pupils attending grades 1 to 5 from 15 different classes, with one class teacher and one teaching assistant from each class.
Inter-rater agreement and confirmatory factor analysis were computed, revealing a low fit of the original instrument to the data. For that reason, the original version was modified, and a reduced version of the scale was created while preserving the original subscales.
A limitation of the study is the fact that the full validation of the instrument was not conducted. The subsequent step in the validation process is verifying the instrument's validity by another diagnostic method.
The instrument is intended for use in school counselling practice.