Method: This was a multi-phase research study involving interviews and focus group protocols designed to determine face and content validity of the human capital survey questions. In phase one, 20 physical education teacher education graduate students and eight physical education teachers evaluated the face and content validity of the human capital survey, by taking the survey and responding to semi-structured and open-ended interview questions. In phase two, 330 high school seniors completed the 36-item self-assessment of human capital survey and an exploratory factor analysis was conducted to determine construct validity.
Analysis/Results: Response options ranged from 1=strongly disagree to 5=strongly agree. The Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin (KMO=0,630) and the Bartlett Test of sphericity (value 3,347.61, p<0.001) indicated that the raw data were suitable for imputation of a factor analysis in SPSS V20. As anticipated, six factors were interpreted as physical (mean variation for this factor=0.66, n=8), individual (M = 0.61, n =3), emotional (M = 0.59, n = 7), intellectual (M= 0.55, n = 6), financial (M = 0.55, n =6), and social capitals (M = 0.50, n = 3) subscales, although not every question significantly contributed to the overall capital. Together all subscales accounted for 44% of the variance. Cronbach alpha reliability tests conducted with all participants (N=330) found the overall survey reliability was 0.81.
Conclusions: With some modifications to the original questions, a valid, reliable survey of adolescent human capital was constructed to determine the differences of perceived human capitals across the six subscales. Creation of this instrument is important because it will help to identify the potential contribution of health promotion efforts and participation in quality physical education programming in expanding perceptions of human capital. Future research should include conducting a confirmatory factor analysis with a larger adolescent sample.