Psychometric Properties of the Gifted Students’ Coping with Anger and Decision Making Skills Scale

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to develop the scale concerning gifted children's’ skills for making decisions and coping with anger and to examine the validity and reliability of the scale. A total of 324 students, which 151 were female and 173 were male, studying in 3 different Science and Arts Center’s (BILSEM) in Istanbul during 2014-2015 academic period participated in the study. Content and construct validity tests were conducted for the validity of the scale, internal consistency and test-retest tests were conducted for the reliability and total correlation analysis was conducted. 48.19% of the total variance was explained with the factor analysis. The scale, which consisted of 16 items, demonstrated a two-factor structure titled as coping with anger and decision making. Factor loads of the scale were between .54 and .78.  The Cronbach alpha reliability coefficient was .76 for the whole scale, and .88 and .73 for the coping with anger and decision making sub-scales respectively. The test-retest reliability coefficients for the whole scale was .81, and .88 and .70 for the coping with anger and decision making sub-scales respectively. It was observed that the item-total correlations of the scale ranged between .44 and .72. Based on these findings, it can be concluded that the Scale for Gifted Children's’ Coping with Anger and Decision Making Skills is a valid and reliable assessment instrument that can be used for education and psychology.

Keywords: Gifted children, coping with anger, decision making, reliability, validity