Measurement of alienation among adolescents:

Purpose

Alienation is an important concept in the study of adolescents’ health and behavior but no gold standard for measuring alienation among adolescents exists. There is a need for new scales with high validity for use in adolescent health and social research. The purpose of the present study was to develop and validate alienation scales in accordance with Seeman’s conceptualization of alienation focusing on three independent variants specifically relevant in adolescent health research: powerlessness, meaninglessness and social isolation.

Methods

Cross-sectional data from 3083 adolescents aged 13 to 15 years from the Danish contribution to the cross-national study Health Behaviour in School-aged Children (HBSC) were used. We identified and developed items, tested the face validity through interviews, and examined the criterion-related construct validity of the scales using graphical loglinear Rasch models (GLLRM).

Results

The three scales each comprised three to five face valid items. All scales contained some local dependency and differential item functioning. However, only to a limited degree, which could be accounted for using GLLRM. When using GLLRM the scales fitted a Rasch model and the scales are therefore essentially construct valid and essentially objective.

Conclusion

The three alienation scales each fulfil the psychometric properties of a good reflective scale. This suggests that the scales may be appropriate in future studies to examine the relation between alienation and a range of adolescent health outcomes such as health, behavior, well-being and quality of life.