title: Assessing the psychometric properties of smoking-related attitudes, self-efficacy, and intention among a diverse population of middle school students.
abstract: Large-scale surveys frequently assess smoking-related attitudes, self-efficacy and intention to understand differences in smoking behavior. However, a critical assumption is that measures of these determinants should be equivalent across different subgroups of a target population. The current study examined the factorial invariance of measures of smoking-related attitudes, self-efficacy, and intention with a large sample (N=13,733) of middle school students from 25 schools in Texas. We examined five levels of factorial invariance using a sequential process, in which increasingly constrained models assess the equivalence of a measure across subgroups. Strong factorial invariance provided a good fit for the model across all of the subgroups: race/ethnicity (CFI=.93), gender (CFI=.96), age (CFI=.95), and grade level (CFI=.95). Invariance results provide strong empirical support for the validity of smoking-related attitudes, self-efficacy, and intention measures across race/ethnicity, gender, age, and grade level for middle school students.
authors: University of Texas at Austin, College of Pharmacy, Austin, TX, USA. kentya.ford@austin.utexas.edu
authors: Kentya H
authors: KH
authors: Ford
authors: Abiola O
authors: AO
authors: Oladapo
authors: Kymberle L
authors: KL
authors: Sterling
authors: Pamela M
authors: PM
authors: Diamond
authors: Steven H
authors: SH
authors: Kelder
authors: Alfred
authors: A
authors: McAlister
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D002648:Child; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D033182:Intention; D008297:Male; D011594:Psychometrics / Q000379:methods / Q000592:standards*; D012574:Schools; D020377:Self Efficacy; D012907:Smoking / Q000523:psychology*; D013334:Students / Q000523:psychology*; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires; D013781:Texas