VAL-U: Psychometric properties of a Values and Civic Attitudes Scale for University Students’ Service-Learning

Abstract Background: The service-learning disciplines can offer a unique opportunity for civic development in university students, as there is a large body of research that links them to values and civic attitudes regarding a vast number of ecological issues and citizen variables. Moreover, one should bear in mind that these students are future generations that will face many pressing social and environmental issues of a citizen nature. Methods: given the need to develop instruments to measure the impact of a learning-service methodology in university students’ values as well as civic attitudes, as the University can be considered a learning step prior to the professional field, the current scale was proposed for the Spanish University population. The main objective of this study was to analyse the internal consistency and factor structure of the proposed VAL-U scale in the Spanish population. Results: The scale confirmed good psychometric properties. Furthermore, the results have shown high reliability and optimal goodness of fit indices. Conclusions: the VAL-U scale might be considered a valuable tool for assessing resilience in the Values and Civic Attitudes Scale for Spanish-speaking University Students’ Service-Learning.