Development of a scale of social interest

Abstract

The purposes of the present study were to develop a social interest scale and to examine the scale's reliability and validity. The participants, junior high school students (7 th and 8 th grades, w=149; average age 13.08) and university students (n = 329; average age 20.16), completed a questionnaire consisting of 24 items measuring social interest, college life anxiety, school adjustment, feelings of inferiority, psychological stress response, and narcissism. Factor analysis yielded 3 factors: feelings of belonging to society and trust in society, self-acceptance, and feelings of contribution. The reliability of the social interest scale was examined by measures of internal consistency and test-retest reliability, and was found to be high. The construct validity of the scale was examined in terms of relations between the scale and the participants' scores on college life anxiety, school adjustment, feelings of inferiority, and psychological stress response. In addition, the data suggested that social interest and narcissism were positively correlated.