Development and preliminary validation of multidimensional life satisfaction of internal migrant workers' children in China

Abstract

Background Internal labor exporting in China has been a common phenomenon, more and more people from rural area of China migrant to cities for jobs, which leads to the unavoidable social situation of left-behind and migrant children. Research has been focusing on the negative influences on these groups of children, while my research attempted to develop a scale to measure their satisfaction of life. I estimate life satisfaction of my target group from 6 domains: friend, school, living environment, self, material, and family. The items in family domain are different for children who live with both of parents and children who don't live with both of parents. Method I collected data for two rounds. In the first round, only my proposed life satisfaction scale for migrant workers' children was used. Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) and Exploratory factor analysis (EFA) were used to detect underlaying factors, model fitting criterions such as root mean square error of approximation (RMSEA), comparative fit index (CFI), and Tucker-Lewis index (TLI), and item loading values' criterions are used to eliminate items. In the second round, the adjusted scale was applied, as well as Student Life Satisfaction Scale (SLSS), Self- Description Questionnaire-II (SDQ-II), and Positive and Negative Affect Schedule (PANAS) for validity estimating. McDonald's Omega was used for reliability estimation. Measurement Invariance between groups was also tested. Latent means of different groups were compared. Result The adjusted life satisfaction of internal migrant workers' children scale contains 31 items for each group. McDonald's Omega showed acceptable values for every domain in two groups. Validity evidence can be seen from: my scale can be distinguished from SLSS and PANAS. Domains in my scale and the overall score also can predict global life satisfaction. The correlations between overall score of my scale positively correlated with scores of different domains of SDQ-II. Measurement invariance testing shows measurement invariance between children live with or without both of parents/males and females/being only child or not on configural, scalar and metric levels. Latent mean comparison shows that children who live with both parents have higher life satisfactions in the domains of friends, living environment, and self. In the sample of children who live with both of their parents, boys have less life satisfaction of family, while children who are only child(ren) have a higher life satisfaction of friends. Conclusion A six-domain specific scale of internal migrant workers' children in China was developed and preliminarily validated in this study.