A University Life Adaptation: Construction and Validation of a Measurement Instrument

The objective of this research was designing the Integration into College Life Inventory (I IVU, by its Spanish acronym) for Puerto Rican students. Researchers used retention and attrition models as their theoretical framework. Content validity and face validity were determined by expert opinion. Construct validity was determined using three groups of freshmen students from a private university in Puerto Rico. These groups were listed as the successful group—comprised of students from the Honors Program, the high-risk group—comprised of students admitted to immersion courses, and the average performance group—comprised of regular students who did not belong to the previous groups. An exploratory factor analysis was performed to discover the psychometric characteristics of the I IVU, group items by dimensions, and design the final version of the survey instrument, which includes sixty items divided into four sub-scales divided as follows: (1) academic-organizational, (2) psychological, (3) occupational, and (4) sociological. The I IVU had a reliability of 0.95. Integration was categorized in three levels: high, moderate, and low. Key-Words: Freshman College Student, Integration into College Life, Student Retention, Student Attrition, Instrument Validation