Reliability and Validity of Communication Apprehension Scale in College Students

Objective:To do a psychometric test of PRCA-24(Personal Report of Communication Apprehension,24 items)to provide an instrument to detect the interpersonal communication anxiety of Chinese college students.Methods:The English version was translated into Chinese and back-translated.After checked the meaning of the original version and the back translation,data were collected from a sample of 208 college students from Dezhou College,including test-retest with two weeks interval.58 of the 208 received Social Avoidance and Distress Scale for criterion validity.Explorative factor analysis was used for item analysis and correlation analysis for criterion validity.Results:The revised scale was divided into three factors.Factor analysis indicated that the three factors could explain 53.8% of the variance with loading between 0.444~0.820.The coefficient of Cronbach's α was 0.88.The test-retest correlations of the three factors were 0.66,0.73,0.79 respectively and that of the total scale was 0.85(P0.01).The correlation between this scale and the Social Avoidance and Distress Scale was 0.49~0.73(P0.01).Furthermore,the product moment coefficient of correlation was between 0.692 and 0.956 of the sub-tests and general test.Conclusion:Communication Apprehension scale has satisfying reliability and validity in college students.