Psychometric analysis of a reduced version of the AF5 Self-concept Scale

Introduction: The importance of the perception of one's potential, of who one is, and of what can become, is decisive in the development of personality, especially in adolescents.

Objective: Analysis the psychometric properties of the García & Musitu's AF5 Self-Concept Scale in a sample of high school students in the city of Lima-Peru.

Material and methods: The study participants were 646 school children (312 boys and 334 girls), ranging in age from 11 to 17 years old (M = 13.95, SD = 1.62). The Garcia and Musitu self-concept scale (AF5) was administered and exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis was performed. Data analysis was done with the programs Factor Analysis (version 10.9.02) and R (version 4.0.2).

Results: It was shown that the original model of the AF5 scale, composed of 30 items distributed in 5 latent factors, does not present adequate goodness of fit indexes. The model was re-specified with 28 and 23 items, with the latter presenting acceptable indexes of goodness of fit and conserving the multidimensional structure of the scale (χ2 = 686,217, df = 220, p = 0.00; IFC = 0,944, TLI = 0,936, SRMR = 0,063, RMSEA = 0,057). Also, the scale reports an adequate reliability (ω = 0.831; CI95% = 0.803 - 0.855).

Conclusions: The AF5 scale (23 items) is a valid and reliable instrument that can be used for research purposes with school children in Lima, Peru.