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Construction and validation of an inventory examining the locus of control in primary school pupils

Affiliacja i adres do korespondencji
Streszczenie

The term “locus of control” means the individual’s conviction about localisation of the control of reinforcements. The locus of internal control refers to perceiving the achieved results as if they were conditioned by one’s own behaviour or individual traits. When the result of activities is perceived as an effect of a chance, luck, destiny, as the effect controlled by other people or unpredictable, we speak about the external locus of control. Admittedly, the internal locus of control is associated with a better emotional and social adaptation. The locus of control is an effect of recurrent experiences and may be subject to modification due to therapeutic effects. Owing to a considerable importance of this variable for psychosocial functioning, creation of reliable tools for investigating it is essential. As far as the authors know, there has been no inventory in Polish as yet that would examine the locus of control in children aged from 8 to 12. In view of the potential importance of monitoring the locus of control in children starting the school education, a decision was taken to draw up a scale designed for this age group. The Locus of Control Scale – Primary Schools (LCS-PS) consists of 20 test items examining the locus of control on Scales of Success and Failure. To estimate the psychometric properties of LCS-PS, 131 pupils of randomly selected primary schools in Warsaw were examined. The reliability of α-Cronbach scale amounts to 0.69. The validity is confirmed by correlations with the average grade and scales of Self-concept, Anxiety, Depression and Anger in the Beck Youth Inventories of Emotional and Social Impairment. A short scale was drawn up, in Polish, of good reliability and validity, examining the locus of control in children aged from 7 to 12. The scale constitutes a supplementation of the tools designed for other age groups, existing on the Polish market.

Słowa kluczowe
locus of control, inventory, children, self-concept, anxiety, depression, anger