Validation of a well-being scale for primary school children in Spain: "How I feel about my school

To translate, adapt, and validate into Spanish the "How I Feel About My School" scale, a 7‑item subjective well‑being questionnaire developed in the United Kingdom to assess how children aged 4 to 11 feel about different aspects of school.

The study consisted of two phases: a first phase involving the transcultural adaptation of the scale, and a second phase focusing on the psychometric validation of the scale. Phase I pursued to obtain a Spanish version that was conceptually equivalent to the original. It was conducted with 48 children and 10 teachers and was carried out in accordance with the Principles of Good Practice for the Translation and Cultural Adaptation Process for Patient-Reported Outcome Measures, including cognitive debriefings. A content analysis followed over the data from the cognitive debriefing, which resulted in accepting the translated version. In Phase II, the number of participants involved in the study was 471 boys and girls. An exploratory factor analysis was performed, the number of factors being determined through parallel analysis. The reliability of the questionnaire was assessed to explore internal consistency using Cronbach's alpha coefficient.

In Phase I, participants found the questions in the scale easy to understand, including the younger children aged 4 and 5 years, who demonstrated good comprehension of the items. Analyses for Phase II indicated that one single factor was identified. Most correlations were significant, and the remaining items showed adequate loadings. The total sample demonstrated moderate internal consistency (Cronbach's alpha = 0.64; ordinal alpha = 0.77; McDonald's omega = 0.66; average inter-item correlation = 0.20).

The HIFAMS scale adapted to the Spanish context can be applied in early preschool/school settings. This adapted instrument could support understanding young children's feelings in educational environments within Spanish populations, which can enable the prevention and management of potential risk situations.