Abstract:

The aim of the current research is to perform validity and reliability studies of the Need for Social Approval Scale (Karaşar ve Öğülmüş, 2016) on adolescents. A total of 239 high school students of whom 132 are females (55.2%) and 107 are males (44.8%) participated in the current study. The convergent validity of the scale was also tested. For this purpose, the “Social Anxiety Scale for Adolescents” was used. This scale, which was developed by La Greca and Lopez (1998), was adapted into Turkish by Aydın and Tekinsav-Sütçü (2007). The internal consistency coefficients of the three sub-dimensions making up the scale were investigated and it was found to be .81 for sensitivity towards others’ judgments, .78 for social withdrawal and .81 for leaving positive impression. The internal consistency coefficient for the scale was found to be .91. It was concluded that the scale has a similar structure in the adolescents sample according to the goodness-of-fit indices. The current study also investigated the relationship between the social approval and the gender and grade level variables. The social withdrawal mean score of the male students was found to be higher than female students. In relation to the grade level variable, the first grade students were found to have taken higher scores for the need for social approval and its sub-dimensions than the higher grade students. All these results have shown that the Need for Social Approval Scale is a reliable and valid scale that can be used in research focusing on adolescents.

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