The purpose of this study aims to develop the sexual development scale of the upper grades of elementary students and verify its validity.
To develop the sexual development scale for the upper grades of elementary students, reviewing previous studies and various scholars'' definitions and categories about sexual development of the upper grades students were examined.
And then 148 questions were selected by analyzing the existing scales for sexual development for the upper grades elementary students, and 130 questions were selected by analyzing focused groups interviewing data of nurse-teachers and counseling experts. As a result of this process, 145 questions were selected.
Next the content validity about 145 preliminary questionnaire was checked by counseling psychology experts three times. and then once face validity was checked by 20 upper grades of elementary students. As a result of this process, total 46 questions were selected.
Finally, an exploratory factor analysis was made by using sexual development scale consisting of those last preliminary items to select the last items. A survey was conducted on 450 the upper grades of elementary students in general schools located in Busan and Gyeongnam. As a result, 18 items were selected. Factor 1 was made up of the consciousness of gender equality. Factor 2 was composed of interactions between friends of opposite sex. Factor 3 comprised coping skills of the social sexual risk. Factor 4 comprised the acceptance of psychologic changes in puberty. Factor 5 comprised the acceptance of physiological changes in puberty.
5 factors and 18 items were developed as the sexual development scale of the upper grades of elementary students. Internal consistency(Cronbach''s ?) showed good between .675 and .833 in five sub-factors and all the scale.
To verify the construct validity and concurrent validity of this scale, a survey was conducted to 303 the upper grades of elementary students in Gyeonggi, Gyeongnam, Busan and Jeonbuk. The analysis of the correlation of the survey to the confirmatory factor analysis, multi-gruop analysis, the sexual attitude scale, the Korean Gender Egalitarianism Scale for Adolescents (KGES-AC), the self-efficacy scale turned out to be good in every regard.
As the result of confirmatory factor analysis, fidelity goodness fit has proved to be good at first. The multi-group analysis proved the developed scale was available between male and female groups. In the results of the concurrent validity test, competencies scale had a statistically meaningful positive correlation to the sex attitude scale, the KGES-AC and the self-efficacy scale.
The implications of this study are as followings; first, this study can enhance better understanding of the sexual development scale of the upper grades of elementary students through the developed scale. Second, this study can contribute future studies by offering scale which can measure sexual development of the upper grades of elementary students.
According to these results, the sexual development scale of the upper grades of elementary students developed in this study turned out to be a valid questionnaire. In addition, this study was showed th potentialities of generalization and commonly application to male and female elementary students. The limitation of the study and possible follow-up projects are proposed in the conclusion section.