Risk factors for school dropout in high school students during the pandemic COVID-19. Content validation of an instrument

Abstract

As a result of the SARS-COV-II pandemic, there was a change in education, most schools in the world moved from face-to-face to virtual education, which led to an increase in school dropout rates. Given this new scenario, it is necessary to have an instrument that accounts for these new factors that play a role in school dropout, therefore, the general objective of this research was the validation and confidence of the content of an instrument that measures the possible risk factors for school dropout during the SARS-COV-II pandemic in men and women in a public high school that transitioned from a face-to-face system to a virtual one. A questionnaire was designed based on a theoretical review; for the validation of content, an expert judgment was carried out, a manual was prepared containing a first structured questionnaire with 41 items and 6 risk factors, 5 experts evaluated each item according to three categories 1) wording and clarity, 2) content and 3) relevance and congruence. A Kappa analysis was performed and obtained K=.480 for wording and clarity, K=.462 for content, and K=.403 for relevance and congruence. These values indicated that the degree of agreement among the experts was moderate, and the pertinent changes were made. Subsequently, for reliability, a pilot test of the corrected questionnaire with 36 items (and seven risk factors: economic, family, emotional, health, connectivity, academic, academic effort), was applied to a sample of 132 students attending UNAM high school at that time. A confidence analysis was carried out and the internal consistency of the instrument was obtained with a McDonald's ordinal alpha w of .903. The instrument presented adequate psychometric properties of validity and reliability.