Development and Psychometric Properties of Prosocial Behaviour Scale for Rescue Workers

Abstract

Prosocial behaviour is a widely studied area in social and behavioral research. Aim of this current research was to develop and validate prosocial behavior scale for those responding to the emergency situations. Most of the earlier work and validated scales of prosocial behaviour are for children and adolescents. The scale was constructed in multiple phases including identification of relevant constructs, item generation, item selection for initial data collection, data collection and empirical analysis of the newly devised scale. Thirty items were finalized through committee approach. Sample of the current study include operational rescuers from four adjacent districts, Peshawar, Kohat, Hangu and Karak. Principal Component Analysis with varimax rotation was performed. KMO and Bartlet Test of Sphericity were found significant indicating adequate and appropriate values for factor analysis. Finally, 23 items and five different constructs were identified including, Emotional Behavior, Social Behavior, Empathetic Behavior, Helping Behavior and Caring & Sharing Behavior. This newly devised scale was validated with two different constructs (scales) of work engagement and Counterproductive Work behaviour respectively to check convergent and discriminate validity. Confirmatory factor analysis was carried out with excellent and acceptable values of model fit. CFA confirmed the same five factors and 23 items of the scale.