A Scale for the Evaluation of Structure Needs and Perceptions in Adolescence

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Abstract
An inventory was constructed which purports to measure the extent to which adolescents want structure and also perceive themselves as having such structure. “Structure”, as here defined, refers to guidance, advice, information, clarity, or direction offered to the adolescent by an adult authority figure. The scale was administered to approximately 1, 700 adolescents at junior and senior high school level on two separate testing occasions. Item analysis reduced the total number of items from 77 to 47 and improved the reliability considerably. Low correlations between the Wants Structure (WS) and Has Structure (HS) sub-scales suggest that the two are not measuring the same thing. Support given a number of hypotheses based on expected relationships between the structure inventory and other tests suggests that the former is measuring what it claims to measure, but further validation is desirable. The inventory seems to have some promise for research in an area which has been largely overlooked.

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