MANUAL

FOR
ADJUSTMENT INVENTORY FOR
SCHOOL STUDENTS
(A I S S)

INTRODUCTION

The Adjustment Inventory has been designed for use with Hindi knowing
school students of India. The inventory seeks to segregate weH adiusted
secondary school students (age group 14 to . 18 years) from poorly adjusted
students in the three areas of adjustment : Emotional, Social and Educational.
A list of 100 questions indicating the significant problems of school students
in the three areas were prepared. The questions were to be answered in 'Yes' or
'No '. This list was presented to 25 judges, all of whom were psychologists
engaged in teaching, counselling, or vocational guidance work, to judge each
item in term of its merit for being included in ·the inventory. Only such items were
retained about which the judges were unanimous. This led to the elimination of 12
out of 100 items. Before undertaking the work of item analysis, the inventory was
administered to a samplA of 100 students to remove the language difficulties, if
any, reported by them in understanding clearly the different items.

Item Analysis
The list of re maining 88 items was administered on tw_o g roups of
subjects-group A and group B. Group A consisted of 100 such students who
were judged to be well-adjusted and Group B,bf 100 students judged to be poorly
. d b f 1· teachers who knew them very well. Chi-square test
adJuste y a group o Ive
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was applied to compare the responses of the tvvo groups in respect of each item.
Fourteen out of a total of 88 items which did not discriminate the two groups
significantly were eliminated from the test. The 74 items that were retained were
adm inistered to a grou p of 370 secondary school students of Patna. Th e
distributions of scores for the whole inventory and for the three parts of it were
tested for normality. As the scores did not depart significantly from a normal
distribution, biserial correlations of each item (1) with the total scores on the
inventory and (2) with the areas total scores were computed. The significance of
biserial correlation at .001 level was fixed as the criterion for retaining an item. This
led to the elimination of 14 items out of 74. The final inventory consisted of so
items, 20 items in each area of adjustment.

Areawise Item Sr. Number

.I' ......
Sr. No. Adjustment Areas Hem Sr. No. Total

1. Emotional 1,4, 7, 10, 13, 16, 19, 22, 25, 28, 31 , 34,
37, 40,43,46, 49, 52, 55, 58 20
2. Social 2, 5, 8, 11 , 14, 17, 20, 23, 26, 29, 32, 35,
38, 41,44,47,50,53,56,59 20
3. Educational 3, 6, 9, 12, 15, 18, 21, 24, 27, 30, 33, 36,
I 39,42, 45, 48,51,54,57,60 20

'" TOTAL 60
)

Sampl~ .

The 60 item inentory in 1·t5 f I f .

· . ' ,na orm , was administered to a randomly
selected representative sample of 19 /
. SO (1200 boys and 750 girls) from class IX to
XI grade pupils of 40 schools of Bih 8 0 f th
f . :, e age of 14-18 years. The distributions
o scores were tested for normalit b . . .
distributions d'd t d . .. y y applying Ch i-square technique. The
. . ' no epart s1grnf1cant,ly from norma,lity.
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Reliability

Coeffi cient of reliability was determined by (i) Split-half method, (ii) Test
retest method, and (iii) K-R formula-20. Table 1 gives the reliability coefficients of
the total test and of sub-tests by different methods.
TABLE 1
Reliability Coefficients of the Inventory
--.,

Sr. No. Method Used Emotional Social Educational Total

1. Split-half 0-94 0-93 0-96 0-95

2. Test-retest 0-96 0-90 0-93 0-93

3. K- R Fromula-20 0-92 0-92 0-96 0-94

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Va lidity

In item -analysis validity coeffici ents were determ ined for each item by
bise ri al correlation method and only such items were retained wh ich yielded
biserial correlation with both the criteria (i) total score and (ii) area score,
significant level being -00 1.
Inter-correlations among the three areas of the inventory we re calculated .
The correlation matrix is being presented in Table 2.

·TABLE2
Correlation tv1atr1x of the Three Areas
/
Ill
"
Sr. No. Adjustment Areas I II

- -20 .19
i
1. Emotional

2. Social -20 - -24

.19 -24 -
3. Educational
,
.,
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··-----The
---- ------- -·· ········------
inventor ·-· ··-······by
was also validated ~- correlating inventory scores with ratings
by the Hostel Superintendent. This was done on the data of 60 _pupils living in the
hostel of Patna Collegiate Multipurpose Higher Secondary School. The Hostel
Superintendent rated the pupils on a five point scale, namely, Excellent, Good,
Average , Poor, and Very Poor in respect of th eir adjustm ents. The product
moment coefficient of correlation between inventory scores and superintendent's

ratings was obtained to be Q. 51.

Norms
Percentile norms were computed for both males and females of all the three
areas (Emotional, Social and Educational) of adjustment separately as also for the
wh ole inventory. Table 3 and 4 give the perce ntiles for mal e and females
respectively.
TABLE3
Percentile Norms for Males
......
/
Percentiles Emotional ,
Social Educational Total

Pgo 9-98 9-88 9.95 26-89

Pao 9-1 0 9-16 9-11 23-4 1

P?o 8- 11 8-24 8 -34 21-34

P50 7-21 7-38 7-40 19-36

Pso 6-18 6 -58 6 -48 17-74

- P40 5-91 6 -00 5-98 16-06

P30 4-42 4 -91 4 -82 14-32

P20 3-11 3.75 3.33 11 -77

P10 2 -01 2-70 2-02
'- 8-82
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TABLE4
Percentile Norms for Females
,r

Percentiles Emotional Social

"
Educational Total

Pgo 9-80 9-91 9.95 27-67

.
Pao 8-3 1 8-45 8-81 . 23 -89
'

P?o 7.45 7.55 7-67 2 1-63

P-~o
0 6-88 6-91 6-98 19-40

P50 6-12 6-27 6-31 17-78

P40 5- 11 I
5-62 5.73 16 -15'-
-
P30 4-21 4.37 4-62 14-53
'
P20 3 -11 3-08 3-6 1 11-81

P10 2- 00 2-31 2-71 8-70

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The subjects can be classified into five categories in accordance with the
raw scores obtained by them on the inventory. The five different categories of
adjustment are, 'A' which stands for excellent, 'B' which stands for good, 'C'
wh ich stands for average, 'D' which stands fo r unsatisfactory, and 'E' which
· stands for very unsatisfactory adjustments . Thi s catego rization was done by
dividing the base line of the normal curve into five equal units, each unit being
equal to 1.2. Table 5 presents ·the classification of adjustment for total-scores and
Table 6 shows the classification in respect of the three areas : Emotional, Social
and Educational.
 S -- -- ----------- ------ -- ------ ·· · · ·······--
8 I !vianual tor A I ~······· ··· ·· ·············· ·······
··········•a••········· TABLE 5
. t Adriustment In terms of Categories.
I
Cass,'fi'catJon
1 o 1

'
-
Range of Scores
r
Category Description Male , Female
J

5 & below 5 & below

-
A Excellent ,

6 12 6 14
B Good
Average 13 - 2 1 i 15 - 22
C
22 - 30 ;, 23 - 31
D Unsatisfactory

E Very Unsatisfactory 31 & above 32 & above

.... ,J

TABLE6
Classification of Adjustment in terms of Catego ries in the Three Areas
r
Adjustment Rang e of Scores "
Category Description
Areas Male Female
A Excellent 1 & below 1 & below
'

B Good ,_. 2- 4 2-5

EMOTIONAL 6 - ..-7
C Average 5- 7
D Unsatisfactory 8 - 10 8 - 10
E Very Unsatisfactory 11 & above 11 & above
A Excellent 2 & below 2 & below
'

B Good , 3- 4 3 -:- 5,
SOCIAL
C Average 5- 7 6- 7
D Unsatisfactory 8 - 10 8 - 10
E Very Unsatisfacto ry 11 & above 11 & above
A Excellent 2 & below
2 & below
B Good 3 4 3 4
EDUCATIONAL - -
C Average 5 7 5 7
-
'

D
Unsatisfactory, 8 - 10 8 - 10
"-
E --
Very U n~atisfae;tory 11 & above .1 1 & abo~
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.,

Table 7 gives Means and Standard Deviations of the populat ion upon wh ich

norms are based .

TABLE7
r "
Adjustment Male Female
Areas
Mean s.o. Mean S.D.

Emotion al 5 -62 3- 12 6 -55 2-81

Social 5-91 '

2-38 6-21 2-52

Educational 6 -38 2-91 . 5.35 3 -00

TOTAL 17-91 7-36 18-1 i 7-27

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Meaning of the symbols and explanation of the areas.

(i) Emotional Adjustm ent : High scores indicate unstable emotion. Students
with low scores tend to be emotionally stable.

(ii) Social Adjustment : Individuals scoring high are submissive and retering .
Low scores indicate aggressive behaviour.

(iii) · Educational Adjustment : Individuals scoring high are poorly adjusted with
their curricu lar and co-cu rricu lar programmes. Persons with low scores are

interested in school programmes.

Instructions for Test Users

1. It is a self-administering inventory. The examiner should read the instructions

given on the front page and the examinees should also read them silently

along with the examiner.

 10 I Manual "'or
II A IS S • •••• ••••• • ••••• a -- ---------- ----- ---- -: . •-
•-; ,•• •~~~;~-~~--~~-;~~~- -l~~~~•;;•r••;~~~~~i-~~-;t~ Ordinari ly an individual takes 10

minutes in completing the test.

3. Examiners should be instructed to interpret the meaning of th sentences i
themselves. However, meaQing of the difficu lt words, if any should be given

by the exami ner. "'

4 . co-operation of the examinees in answering the inventory is very essential.

The examiner should assure them that their answers and scores will be
treated with strictest confidence.

5. The examiners should indicate frankly and honestly the purpose of the test,
if and when any question regarding this _is raised by the examinees.

6. There is no need of telling why letters and numbers are placed before the
questions. If, a question is asked about these the examiners should tell the
m·eaning of the letters.

Instru ctions for Scoring

Inventory can be sco red by hand only. For any answer indica tive of .
gdj ustment Zero is given , otherwise a score of one is awarded . Table 8 shows the
key response indicative of lack of adjustment.

The inventory is de~igned to be an aid in counselling school students of age

group 14-18 years whose personal problems pertain to any of the three areas
included in the test. The use of ·Deonagari letters A, s and c corresponding to
Emotional adjustment, Soci al adjustment and Educational adjustment enables the
test user to discover readi ly questions relating to each measure. The total score
indicates the general adjustment status.
 Manual for A I S S I 11
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TABLE S
Indicative of Lack of Adjustment Area wise -©.
'I

EMOTIONAL SOCIAL EDUCATIONAL

Response Response Response

Indicative Indicative Indicative
Item No. Item No. of Lack of Item No. of Lack of
of Lack of
Adjustment Adjustment Adjustment

1 YES 2 YES 3 YES

4 YES 5 YES 6 YES
7 YES 8 YES 9 YES
10 YES 11 .. NO 12 NO
13 YES 14 YES 15 YES
16 YES 17 NO 18 NO
19 YES 20 NO 21 YES
22 YES 23 NO 24 NO
25 YES 26 NO 27 · YES
28 YES 29 YES 30 NO
31 YES 32 NO 33
·-
NO
34 YES 35 YES 36 YES
37 YES 38 NO 39 YES
40 YES 41 NO 42 YES
' 43 YES 44 NO 45 YES
46 YES 47 YES 48 NO

49 YES 50 NO 51 NO
: 52 ·YES 53 NO 54 NO
I

I 55 YES 56 NO 57 NO
I 58 YES 59 NO 60 NO ...
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I perm ission of the publisher. Manual for Adjustment Inventory for School Students (AISS-ssi). ,
I