Development and Validation of Social Burnout Scale for College Students Using Multidimensional Rasch Measurement Models

This study aims to develop and validate a social burnout scale for college students by applying the multidimensional Rasch model. We developed 40 items of 4 sub-factors: physical burnout, cognitive burnout, emotional burnout, and behavioral burnout. The researchers conducted the survey online and offline and analyzed responses from 531 four-year college students. We conducted dimensionality analysis, assessed the appropriateness of response categories, evaluated item fit, examined subject-item distribution, performed differential item function analysis, and analyzed criterion-related validity to verify the factor structure and validity of the developed 40 preliminary items. We determined that the four-factor multidimensional model was suitable by comparing the unidimensional and multidimensional models. In the item analysis, 34 items met the standards, and the analysis of the differential item function revealed that no items were different depending on gender. Social burnout is correlated with social achievement goals, basic psychological needs, adjustment in college life, and depression in criterion-related validity. Last, the EAP/PV reliability, separation reliability, and Cronbach α coefficient of the scale were good. The significance of this study is that it applied the multidimensional Rasch model to develop and validate a social burnout scale for college students.