Measuring adolescents' perceptions of academic social support : the relationship between academic social support, global social support, and level of functioning

Advisors: Christine Malecki.Committee members: Michelle Demaray; Greg Waas.The present study investigated middle school students' perceptions of academic social support from siblings, parents, classmates, and close friends. The purpose of the current study was to develop a measure of academic social support. The relationship between academic social support was compared with global social support and overall level of functioning. The following measures were used to investigate the psychometric properties of the Child and Adolescent Social Support Scale-Academic: the Child and Adolescent Social Support Scale (CASSS; Malecki, Demaray, & Elliott, 2000), the Behavioral Assessment System for Children, 2nd edition (BASC-2 SRP) (Reynolds & Kamphaus, 2004), and the Academic Competence Evaluation Scale (ACES; DiPerna & Elliott, 2000). The factor analysis supported the four factor structure of the CASSS-A overall. Evidence of internal consistency was strong for the entire measure and within each source subscale, as well as by gender and by grade. Evidence of content validity, construct validity, and convergent validity was strong, with one exception; evidence of construct validity of academic achievement was low. Results did not provide support for the matching hypothesis of academic social support.M.A. (Master of Arts