Evaluación del clima escolarconducta prosocial y antisocial, actitudes hacia la violencia y consecuencias psicosociales en estudiantes de Educación Primaria y Secundaria de la Región de Murcia

Laburpena

Objectives. The main objectives of this doctoral thesis are: (a) to know which instruments evaluate school climate in the population belonging to the educational stages of Primary Education and Compulsory Secondary Education; (b) to develop and validate a questionnaire that assesses school climate; and (c) to explore school climate from the students' perspective, using a cluster analysis with students of Compulsory Secondary Education (SCE). Methodology. The thesis begins with a ‘rapid reviews’ of the questionnaires and scales available in the main electronic databases (Academic Search Premier, CSIC-ISOC, Education Source, ERIC, Medline, Open Dissertations, PsicoDoc, PsycINFO, PsycArticles, Psychology and Behavioral Sciences Collection, Social Sciences Full Text (H. W. Wilson) and Violence & Abuse Abstracts) was carried out. Inclusion criteria were: (a) studies written in English or Spanish; (b) instruments administered to students (aged 7-19 years); and (c) reporting psychometric properties. The exclusion criteria were: (a) not fitting the concept of school climate described above; and (b) those aimed at specific areas of education. Although 8346 publications were initially located, finally 27 questionnaires were included in the rapid reviews. Subsequently, an ad hoc self-report questionnaire was developed using a dual-strategy design, psychometric and non-experimental, cross-sectional, and descriptive-comparative. The sample includes 600 children between 10 and 17 year of age who were in 4th grade of Primary Education and 2nd grade of SCE: Primary and Secondary Education students from the Región de Murcia. Exploratory and Confirmatory Factorial Analysis fit indices were used for the psychometric study. Finally, a study was carried out using clustering methodology to explore the current school climate in secondary schools. The clustering explored school climate from the students' perspective, through their empirical grouping based on their attitudes towards violence, internalizing, and externalizing behavior and self-esteem. The initial sample included 1113 adolescents; all the students enrolled in SCE in a town in the Region of Murcia. The final sample consisted of 502 participants. Results. The first study showed that only one instrument evaluated the school climate, understood as the set of violent and prosocial behaviors in schoolchildren. Based on this, the CONVIVE Questionnaire was created. Consisting of 26-items made up of 4 subscales that evaluate antisocial and prosocial behaviors, both performed towards others and received by peers. Differences were observed in these behaviors as a function of sex and educational stage. Finally, the third study obtained two results. The first analysis yielded two adolescent profiles: Antisocial Receiving Group and Prosocial Group. The second analysis yielded three profiles: Antisocial Receiver Group, Prosocial Group and Antisocial Actor Group. Conclusions. Although there are many instruments for the evaluation and measurement of school climate, only two evaluation instruments that takes into account both perspectives of the school climate (prosocial and violent behaviors). One of them being the CONVIVE Questionnaire, which briefly and dynamically explores the behavioral manifestations of school climate. In addition, this thesis empirically categorizes adolescents from their own perspective, facilitating knowledge of the characteristics of each group based on the behavioral, attitudinal, and psychosocial variables used.