Psychometrics

Background. The quality of sleep significantly impacts children’s day-to-day performance, with at least 20% reporting issues with sleepiness. Valid tools for assessing the quality of sleep are needed.

Objective. In this study, we assessed the psychometric properties of the Russian version of the Pediatric Daytime Sleepiness Scale (PDSS). The initial adaptation of the PDSS was conducted on a sample from the Arctic regions of Russia. This location may have influenced the scale's generalizability due to variations in natural daylight across different areas of the country.

Design. To rectify this, we gathered a comprehensive, geographically diverse sample from Russia. This combined dataset comprised 3772 participants between 10 to 18 years of age, from nine different regions of Russia.

Results. We confirmed the unifactorial structure of the PDSS, which showed no regional effects. The psychometric analysis indicated that one item from the 8-item PDSS could be removed, thereby improving the scale's model fit. We also observed gender and age impacts on sleep quality: boys reported fewer sleep-related issues than girls, and younger children reported fewer problems than older children.

Conclusion. This study validates the usefulness and reliability of the Russian version of the PDSS, thereby enhancing its general applicability. Furthermore, we replicated previously reported age and sex effects on the sleep quality of school-aged children.

Background. For the last few years, in the field of school education, social-emotional competencies have been gaining in importance because they result in positive attitudes and adaptation to school (Mella et al., 2021).

Objective. The current study was designed to conduct Urdu translation, cross-language validation, and confirmatory factor analysis of the Social-Emotional Competence Questionnaire (SECQ) for Pakistani adolescents.

Design. Urdu translation was done using the standard back-translation method. The data for the main study was collected using a non-random sampling method for 910 adolescents who were between 10 to 19 years old.

Results. The findings of the pilot study (n = 64) show that the Social-Emotional Competence Questionnaire is a reliable questionnaire, as Cronbach’s alpha reliabilities of both versions (English and Urdu) were acceptable (Version 1 α = 0.77; Version 2 α = 0.77). After 15 days, the Pearson product-moment correlation was checked to meet the objective of cross-language validation, which resulted in a high correlation between the two forms (r = 0.88). The riginal author of the questionnaire had proposed a factor structure consisting of five factors, namely: self-awareness, social awareness, self-management, relationship management, and responsible decision-making. Results of the confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) in the present study also confirmed and supported the five-factor structure in comparison to other models for the Urdu version.

Conclusion. The Social-Emotional Competence Questionnaire is a reliable and culturally-validated tool for adolescents attending school, which can be used in future research for measuring social-emotional competencies.