Development and Standardization of an Impulse Control Scale for Adolescents

Adolescent is an age of more changes including mental, behavioural, emotional, physical etc. These changes are so drastic that adolescents or children find it difficult to adjust with many of these situations. Adolescents confront with many psychological disorders and stressors and there is need to timely identify and tackle these problems. Impulsivity is one such problem which is faced by adolescents more frequently as there are lots of hormonal changes happening at this period. A tool that measure impulsivity in adolescents and which can be adopted in Indian culture was not found; hence an Impulse Control Scale for Adolescents (ICSA) was developed. Based on the different reviews and studies, it was identified that five dimensions can be considered for measuring impulse control. These five dimensions are instant decisions and actions, risk taking, irresponsibility, lack of planning, and hyperactivity. The scale was developed using five point Likert scale in which 33 items were prepared. After the construction of items, expert validation was established for the face validity of the scale. The developed scale was administered on the group of 54 adolescents for identifying any difficult words and to find out the understanding of the adolescents. In order to find out the reliability of the scale, it was administered on 428 adolescents selected randomly from four Government High Schools and Senior Secondary Schools of Bathinda district of Punjab, India. The reliability was established using test-retest method in which the coefficient of correlation was found to be 0 .88 and its internal consistency was found to be 0.70. Age norms were also developed for the three age groups i.e. 13 to 14 years, 15 to 16 years and 17 to 19 years. The ICSA was proved to be easy to administer, score and also interpreting the results.