Psychometric Properties of the Argentinean Flow State Scale in Prosocial Activity for Children and Adolescents

BELÉN MESURADO

Cape Town

Conferencia; 30th International Congress of Psychology; 2012

International Congress of Psychology

The optimal experience or flow is a concept developed by Csikszentmihalyi (1997, 2000), who defines it as the mental state of operation in which the person is fully immersed in what he or she is doing, characterized by a feeling of energized focus, full involvement, and success in the process of the activity. Jackson and Marsh (1996) developed The Flow State Scale (FSS) to assess the flow experience in sports, although it can be adapted to other contexts such as work, education, etc (Garcia Calvo et. al., 2008). The purposes of this research were: (1) to adapt The Flow State Scale to examine the optimal experience in prosocial activity in children and adolescents, (2) to study its psychometric properties. The sample included 500 participants, both sexes, aged 10 to 15 (M = 10.95; DT= .84), of middle socioeconomic level, from Argentina. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses were run to test construct validity. The convergent validity was measured using with The Optimal Experience Scale for Children and Adolescents (Mesurado, 2008). The results revealed satisfactory validity and internal consistency of the instrument, obtaining a factor model made up of a main factor and nine subscales as proposed by the original authors.