Validation of Pre-Adolescent Decision-Making Competence in Turkish students

Abstract

The objective of this study was to adapt the Pre-Adolescent Decision-Making Competence Test to Turkish, which was originally developed in English by Weller, Levin, Rose and Bossard (2012) for assessing decision-making competence of children between the ages of 9 and 14. For this purpose; a) the test and instructions were translated into Turkish, b) the Turkish test was administered to a group of 398 students as a pilot, c) retest was administered to a group of 97 students, and finally, d) a group of 382 students was subject to a norm study. The Confirmatory Factor Analysis model created by the data of the pilot administration was well adapted, and one-factor model was verified for construct validity. As the construct of the test was altered, a Confirmatory Factor Analysis was performed on the data obtained from the norm study. A construct similar to that acquired from the data of the first test administration and the results obtained have even relatively better fit indices. Although the reliability values were less than what was expected, Cronbach’s Alpha coefficient of internal consistency was similar to the results obtained from the original test.

Keywords

• decision-making competence
• preadolescence
• test validation