Design, development and validation of an instrument to measure risk factors in college students.

Abstract

The delimitation of academic risk profiles through the measurement of the factors considered relevant in the study of retention and dropout have been a continuous work of higher education institutions. The challenge for the institutions is in designing appropriate instruments with the definition of constructs based on the wide variety of the student´s profiles between regions, even in the same country.

This work describes the development and validation of the Psychopedagogical Questionnaire of Academic Background, an instrument to measure general risk factors that can guide in the definition of specific profiles of freshmen students. The screening and validation analysis was performed on a sample of 630 participants from northwestern Mexico. The instrument consists of 84 items that address the following factors: academic, personal and vocational. As evidence of internal consistency, Cronbach's alpha calculated taking all items as a single dimension was 0.84, and the ω_t was 0.88, indicating an adequate internal consistency.

The validity evidence was the linear regression models which show that there is an indicative value of retention in its correlation with the personal and vocational area. From the findings, results are observed that indicate a way forward to deepen the measurement of this specific population.