The Arabic Leary Impostorism Scale: initial psychometric evaluation in a university student population

The Leary Impostorism Scale (LIS) is a brief established instrument designed to assess impostorism; however, no validated Arabic version is currently available. This study aimed to translate, culturally adapt, and evaluate the psychometric properties of the Arabic LIS among university students.

A cross-sectional validation study was conducted among Arabic-speaking university students in Saudi Arabia. Participants completed the Arabic LIS and comparator measures of impostorism, self-efficacy, and perfectionism. Psychometric evaluation included internal consistency, exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses, construct and concurrent validity, and test-retest reliability.

A total of 185 participants with complete LIS data were included in the psychometric analyses. The Arabic LIS demonstrated excellent internal consistency (Cronbach's α = 0.93; McDonald's ω = 0.93). Factorability indices supported factor analysis [KMO = 0.90; Bartlett's χ ²(21) = 1536.59, p < 0.001]. Exploratory factor analysis based on polychoric correlations supported a single-factor structure, with factor loadings ranging from 0.81 to 0.94 and an eigenvalue of 5.45. Confirmatory factor analysis showed statistically significant freely estimated loadings (p < 0.001), with standardized loadings ranging from 0.78 to 1.00; global fit indices were χ ²(14) = 105.39, CFI = 0.91, TLI = 0.87, RMSEA = 0.19 (90% CI [0.16, 0.22]), and SRMR = 0.06. Strong positive correlations were observed with the CIPS-20 (r = 0.76), CIPS-10 (r = 0.77), and IPSS-3 (r = 0.66), whereas weaker correlations were found with general self-efficacy (r = 0.20) and perfectionism (r = 0.16-0.18). Test-retest reliability was moderate among 14 participants retested after 1-4 weeks (Pearson r = 0.65; ICC = 0.65).

The Arabic LIS demonstrated high internal consistency and promising initial evidence of validity as a brief measure of impostorism among Arabic-speaking university students. Further evaluation of its factor structure and temporal stability in a broader population is warranted.