Standardization and validation of peer -support- need scale for undergraduate students in higher educational institutes

Introduction

Transition from school to college is more convenient than school to university. Work environment is quite different from the colleges in terms of working hours, academic and non-academic activities, student-teacher engagement, advisee and advisor interactions and meeting out the expectations of teachers and guides. University set certain milestones for the faculty and these milestones are reflected in career advancement scheme (CAS). To reach these milestones, Universities promote scientific temperament, individualism, self-dependence, an environment to create and innovate something concrete and solve the emerging issues of the society. In professional arena, one cannot survive in isolation. Individuals working in organizations need to work in teams. Preparation to work in team and to develop collaborative environment, students need to understand the importance of interdependence. It is anticipated that the prepared student will turn out to be an empathetic colleague. For learning interdependence, they need to understand and accept the individual differences; In nutshell, to become a productive worker in any organization, an individual need to grow as an empathetic, supportive individual who does not hesitate in seeking help and is eager to help colleague in crisis or whenever situation demands. To develop these skills, at the very outset, students are required to understand their own expectations from their peers, only then they will be able to understand what their peers expect from them. According to Graves et al (2022) [1] , in academic environment, peers play a vital role as a support network because of the mutual trust they share, their capacity to detect early signs of distress and their constant proximity, all of which help cultivate feelings of inclusion and acceptance. The literature consistently reports that peer support enhances social connections, emotional well-being and coping mechanisms such as selfesteem and adaptive behaviors (King & Fazel, 2021; Peersman et al, 2019). [2,3] Further studies suggest that peer support initiatives can significantly alleviate these challenges by promoting friendships, strengthening social connections, encouraging open communication, and enabling the sharing of both emotional and practical assistance. The present scale was constructed to measure the perceived need of peer support in undergraduate students. Initial step taken to construct the scale was informal discussions with students inside and outside their classrooms and hostels then reviewed the literature related to the need for the peer support in students studying in higher educational institutes. From the reviewed literature it was observed that the relevance of provision of peer support to others was well documented and established only in medical field but with the patients suffering from either mental illnesses or addictions. Research studies related to peer support in educational institutes were very few and that too was available in international institutes like Oxford University. Literature including empirical studies indicated that students when enter higher educational institutes they do struggle with their academics and non-academic activities. Informal discussions reflected that the students www.extensionjournal.com perceive the need for peer support primarily in educational, social and emotional areas. Keeping the feedback of students in view, current research work was planned to standardize the peer-support-need scale. The first step in this endeavour was to construct items.

Item construction

Items were constructed and consisted of a pool of 150 items related to educational, social and emotional area, Fifty items in each of the three areas were separated and categorized. Then each item was evaluated and categorized with the help of subject matter specialists from the department of Human Development & Family Studies (HDFS), Extension Education & Communication Management (EECM) and experts from the field of Psychology. Area-wise, total 17 items in Educational area, 20 items in Social area and 15 items in Emotional area were selected. The scale now comprised of total 52 items (Table -1).

Item analysis

For item analysis, sixty students from PAU volunteered to participate in the pilot testing of the scale, were administered the given items. These students were not part of selected sample. Then scores were calculated and summed up. Scores were arranged in increasing order. Two groups were formed in which one group consisted of twenty five percent high scorers and other group consisted of twenty five percent low scorers. Then means were calculated separately for both the high and low scorers. Statistical operation, ttest was applied to check the relevance of the items. After analysis, the difference in the mean scores in one item, EDU10 (Peer support helps me to improve my questioning skills) from educational area and one item SO6 (Peer support helps me to spend my leisure hours) from social area, of higher scorers and low scorers were found to be non-significant. Therefore, these items were rejected (EDU10 and SO6) and rest of the items were retained. Now the scale contained total 50 items. Table 2 shows the significant differences between the two groups (high scorers and low scorers) of the undergraduate students at 1% level of significance. The high Cronbach's Alpha value of 0.887 demonstrates strong internal consistency of the scale (Table 3). With reliability coefficients exceeding 0.75 in all the areas, the scale was considered reliable for measuring the need of peer support in undergraduate students.

Validity analysis

To establish the validity of the scale, Content validity and construct validity of the scale was assessed. The content validity was determined by the experts. For examining the construct validity of the scale, factor loadings/constructs were extracted using factor analysis (Table 4) Factor loadings help to understand to what extent a variable is influenced by a factor. Items with factor loadings below a threshold (i.e 0.4) were discarded, as they were considered weak and had no relationship with the identified factors.

Factor loadings close to 1 or -1 depict strong influence. Factor analysis in Table 4 indicated that the Items EDU6, EDU10 and SO6 were rejected because their factor loadings (shown in shaded rows against the respective item) were less than 0.4. After establishing the reliability and validity, the final version of scale consisted of 49 statements categorized in three areas: Educational, Social and Emotional. The responses were recorded on the five-point Likert scale (Table 5) representing the extent of perceived need of peer support in undergraduate students in higher educational institutes. Finally, the scale was administered and responses were recorded.

Administering the scale Locale of the study

The study was carried out in three Higher Educational Institutes namely-Punjab Agricultural University (PAU) Ludhiana, Chaudhary Charan Singh Haryana Agricultural University (CCSHAU) Hisar, and Chaudhary Sarwan Kumar Himachal Pradesh Krishi Vishvavidyalaya (CSKHPKV) Palampur. The representative sample from the three Universities as per the estimated number of students enrolled in the University was calculated at 90% level of confidence and 5% margin of error as follows

Sample selection

A quasi-experimental design was used to for the selection of sample. The study was conducted with sample size of 900 undergraduate students, volunteered to participate from the constituent colleges of their respective University. The total sample of undergraduate students was equally distributed across locale and gender which means at each higher educational institutes, total sample size was comprised of 300 undergraduate students and the total no. of female undergraduate students was 450 and the total no. of male undergraduate students was 450.

Age and Gender wise norms of the standardized scale From the data figures it is clearly reflected that among different age groups, majority of the undergraduate students perceived the need of peer support was in the age range of 18-20 years followed by 16-18 years of students. Proportion of students aged 22-24 years of age was very small. This may be attributed to the factor that over the time as students' progress towards the completion of their degree program they get adjusted to the academic environment and developed connections with their classmates, roommates and faculty. Means were found to be almost equal for all age range except in the age range of 20-22 years. Across gender, females' mean scores were higher than the male students which indicated that the females perceived more need for the support from their peers in comparison to their male counterparts in all of the age groups. Mean scores of male students in comparison to their counterparts in the age range of 22-24 years were comparatively very less which indicated that as male students progressed in their studies they relied less on their peers. It may be concluded that younger students perceived higher peer support in comparison to the older ones.

Conclusion

Results indicated that need for the peers' support in undergraduates in higher educational institutes decreases as they progress in their age. The need is higher in female students as compared to male students. This standardized scale successfully established the norms and classification based on the extent of perceived need of peer support. With the help of norms and classification, undergraduate students may be screened for providing need-based interventions in the State Agricultural University.

Acknowledgement

AcknowledgementWe are indebted to students who volunteered to participate in this study. We extend our gratitude to the faculty at PAU, www.extensionjournal.com CCSHAU and CSKHPKV in facilitating us during research work, We are thankful to the experts Dr. Tarika Sandhu, Dr. Sukhwinder Kaur, Dr. Inderpreet Kaur from Department of Psychology, Punjabi University, Patiala for their valuable inputs. We are thankful to Dr. Davinder Singh for helping us in statistical analysis.

References

1. Graves BS, Hall ME, Dias-Karch C, Haischer MH, Apter C. Gender differences in perceived stress and coping among college students. PLoS One. 2022;16:e0255634.
2. King T, Fazel M. Examining the mental health outcomes of school-based peer-led interventions on young people: a scoping review of range and a systematic review of effectiveness. PLoS One. 2021;16:e0249553.
3. Peersman G, Fletcher G, MacFarlane A. Peer support approaches: to what extent are they appropriate, acceptable, beneficial? What is needed to implement them well? A systematic review of international literature. Melbourne: The Australia and New Zealand School of Government (ANZSOG); 2019.