Factor Structure and Psychometric Properties of the Infatile Stress Scale Adapted to a Blind Child Sample

Abstract

Methods and instruments specifically designed for psychological assessment of blind children are rare. Nevertheless, the adaptation of psychological measures for screening individuals in the blindness context is possible. We analysed the psychometric properties and the factorial structure of the Infantile Stress Scale (ISS) in order to study a trustful method of stress measurement in this population. The instrument was applied in 92 congenital blind children of elementary school students from Benjamin Constant Institute of Rio de Janeiro. The exploratory factorial analysis showed four factors as expected, showing good internal consistency of the four scale dimensions. Confirmatory factor analysis detected the one factor model as the best, such as pointed by the literature, what demonstrates that the four dimensions converge to a single construct: Stress. The scale reliability was satisfactory with a Conbrach’s alpha of 0.91. This study gives us subsidence of reliability and one-factor structure of the ISS for congenital blind children stress measurement.