Development and Validation of Peer Support for China University Students Using Exploratory and Confirmatory Factor Analysis

Abstract

Peer support is crucial in the health care system. However, the implications of peer support have been reported to be unsatisfactory in the university context. The purpose of this study is to investigate the efficacy of peer support by creating and validating an instrument. A suitable theory is the Social Identity Theory, proposed by psychologists Tajfel and Turner in the 1970s, which examines how people define themselves in social groupings. The framework of the Peer Support Scale, developed by Kuo et al. (2007), was employed to develop and validate this instrument in order to obtain a more profound understanding of this problem. For the pilot study, 394 valid responses were gathered from this cross-sectional investigation. Using SPSS, 192 people underwent exploratory factor analysis (EFA), and AMOS was used to conduct confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) on 202 data. Experts' conclusions recommended that one item be removed and four items moved from the physical support dimension to the emotional support dimension. Subsequently, the results of the EFA concluded that all the remaining items fell only into one construct with higher loading factors, but to fulfil discriminant validity, construct validity, and convergent validity of the CFA, eight items were eliminated before the actual study. Despite the recognized importance of peer support in healthcare, its effectiveness in university settings is lacking, prompting the need for a comprehensive evaluation tool.