‘How I Feel About My School’: The construction and validation of a measure of wellbeing at school for primary school children

Abstract

There is a growing focus on child wellbeing and happiness in schools, but we lack self-report measures for very young children. Three samples (N = 2345) were combined to assess the psychometric properties of the How I Feel About My School (HIFAMS) questionnaire, which was designed for children aged 4–8 years. Test–retest reliability was moderate (intraclass correlation coefficient =.62). HIFAMS assessed a single concept and had moderate internal consistency (Cronbach’s alpha values from.62 to.67). There were low correlations between scores on the child-reported HIFAMS and parent and teacher reports. Children at risk of exclusion had significantly lower HIFAMS scores than the community sample (mean difference = 2.4; 95% confidence interval (CI) = [1.6, 3.2]; p