Validation of the French-Canadian Version of the Positive Youth Development Scale-Short Form (PYD-SF)

Abstract

The Positive Youth Development Scale-Short Form (PYD-SF) is a 34-item questionnaire assessing the Five Cs model of PYD that has received little interest in contexts outside of the United States. This study aimed to validate the PYD-SF for use with older adolescents in a French-Canadian context, by testing the bifactor structure and examining its reliability and validity with respect to important adolescent outcomes (e.g., vitality, depression, substance use). The French-Canadian version of the scale was administered to 359 ninth-grade students (M_age = 14.39; 50% girls) attending two schools in the province of Quebec. The results found support for the bifactor model. Likewise, the global PYD showed moderate associations with the adolescent outcomes in expected directions with high internal consistency estimates. These findings suggest the French-Canadian version of PYD-SF reliably measures the global construct of PYD, but caution is needed in calculating the C-specific subscale scores.

Acknowledgements

We are grateful to the students who participated in the research. This research was supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (435-2017-0723).

Data availability statement

Data available on request from the authors.

Disclosure statement

The authors report there are no competing interests to declare.

Notes

1 For comparability, we estimated a model with the same specifications as in Geldfhof and colleagues’ study (i.e., bifactor CFA with correlations among specific factors). With comparable model specifications, there were two key observations: (1) Items assessing Character and Connections loaded on their target factors, making these two specific factors meaningful (in line with Geldhof and colleagues’ findings); (2) the factor loadings of the items assessing Competence did not change significantly, except for social competence not loading on the global PYD (still at odds with Geldhof and colleagues’ findings).

Additional information

Funding

We are grateful to the students who participated in the research. This research was supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (435-2017-0723).