Getting Stuck in Thoughts: Development of Ruminative Inertia Scale for University Students

The current study aimed to develop an indigenous assessment scale for Ruminative Inertia in university students. A three-step model was used to develop the scale including; items generation, expert validation, and pilot testing. Initially, a list of 46 items was generated as an outcome of open-ended interviews from 20 university students (men = 10 and women = 10). After removing the duplications and overlapping a list of 43 items were given to the eight clinical psychologists for the expert validations. Finally, Ruminative Inertia Scale (RIS) was converted into a self-report measure consisting of a 5-point Rating scale (0–4) where 0 (not at all) and 4 (always). In the main study phase, the final scale was administered to participants with age range 17 to 24 years (M = 20.70, SD = 1.68). Sample for the exploratory study included 250 men and women whereas for confirmatory factor analysis another data consisting of 200 participants was collected. Stratified Random Sampling was used to recruit the participants from Public and Private Universities. The exploratory factor analysis using Principal Component Factor Analysis (varimax rotation) revealed three factors included Self-ruminations, Social-ruminations, and Spiritual-ruminations. The Ruminative Response Scale (Nolen-Hoeskma, 2004) was used to find out the concurrent validity of RIS. RIS had an internal consistency of (α =.89), split-half reliability of (.84). The concurrent validity was found to be 0.96. Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) generated good fit indices retaining the three-factor structure obtained in EFA.