Abstract:

The purpose of this research is to study the structural validity of the adulthood scale, which was developed by Reiffman, Arnett and Colwell (2003) and developed by the Turkish adaptation study Atak and Çok (2008) with the immutability of measurement of the structural validity. In accordance with this objective, the measurement immutability of the adult scale in gender and age-based comparison groups has been tested with Multi Group Confirmatory Factor Analysis (MGCFA) testing the immutability of the co-variance structures within structural equality models. The research participants are 1061 educational faculty, which is registered at a state university in Mersin Province, and consists of bachelor's and pedagogical formation students. The measurement model is created from 20 substances and three key factors in the manifested adult scale (1 Factor: Negativity/Instability; 2 Factor: Identity Discovery/Intermediate Feeling; 3 Factor: Experiment/Self-Focus) and has been tested with gender and age differences with MGCFA analyses and four different hierarchical models. In the analyses, comparative compatibility criteria of CFI between the condition in which no limitation is made (formal immutability) and other immutability tests in which more limits are required (as a result, metric immutability, scale immutability, solid immutability) were observed. It has been found that the determined adulthood scale does not provide separate scales and rigorous conditions in all scales and 3 subfactors in both gender and age groups, and that the formal and metric (except the gender-test subfactor) unchanging conditions.