Development and Validation of the Youth Programs-Community Education Environment Scale (YP-CEES)

The current study focused on establishing the factor structure, reliability, discriminant validity, and construct validity of the Youth Programs – Community Education Environment Scale (YP – CEES) using a large diverse sample of 1,969 youth participating in relationship education programs in multi-session workshops facilitated by trained facilitators. Six subscales were developed based on the extant literature: facilitation quality, facilitator-participant relationship quality, cofacilitator relationship quality, facilitator coregulation skills, individual connection, and group engagement. Cronbach’s alpha reliability indicated high reliabilities for the total scale and the subscales. Confirmatory factor analyses established the factor structure with good model fit for a 6-factor measure. Discriminant validity was evident based on moderate covariances among subscale factors. Construct validity was also evident by moderate to high correlations between subscale scores and global measures of facilitator and program quality. Suggestions for using the YP-CEES are provided.