Construction and validation of a psychometric tool for generational identity

There is a lack of a psychometric tool for generational identity. We have conducted two studies involving senior Bangladeshi nationals, containing both independence war veterans and non-veterans, to develop a new generational identity scale (GIS). The first study (N=300) prepared an initial pool of 31 items and got them vetted by expert judges, which retained 21 items to form the provisional GIS (GIS-21). An exploratory factor analysis on GIS-21 excluded nine items and offered a two-factor solution: (i) identification with the generation and (ii) awareness of the generational importance. The second study (N=176) ran a confirmatory factor analysis on the resulting GIS-12 and dropped another item to achieve a better model fit (χ²/df =74.74/42 =1.78, CFI =0.96, TLI =0.95, RMSEA =0.05, and SRMR =0.05). The remaining 11-item GIS (GIS-11) showed excellent reliability (mean inter-item correlation coefficient =.44, Cronbach’s alpha =.89) and satisfactory temporal stability (ICC =.61, 95% CI =0.30 to 0.78) over a 4-week interval. The Bangladesh independence war veterans scored higher on GIS-11 than did the non-veterans, indicating the scale’s diagnostic validity. The scale’s moderate correlation (r_s=.63, p<.001) with another measure for generational identification demonstrates its convergent validity. We recommend that researchers could use this scale on different populations and age groups upon appropriate validation. This folder contains three data set reported for this manuscript.