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

A person’s inability to change levels of rumination from one consecutive day to another is called Ruminative Inertia. The current study aimed to develop a culturally relevant assessment scale for Ruminative Inertia in university students. The three-step procedure was used to develop the scale including item generation, expert validation, and pilot testing. Initially, open-ended interviews were conducted with the respondents (men=10 and women=10) and their verbatims were noted. these verbatims were then converted into phrases and a list of 43 items was generated after removing the duplications and overlapping. These items were given to the eight clinical psychologists for the expert validations and Content Validity Index was calculated. Finally, Ruminative Inertia Scale (RIS) was converted into a self-report measure consisting of a 5-point Rrating 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, S.D.= 1.68). Stratified Random Sampling was used to recruit the participants from Public and Private universities. The Ruminative Response Scale (Nolen-Hoeskma, 2004) was used for find out the concurrent validity of RIS. The exploratory factor analysis using principal component factor analysis (varimax rotation) was used to find out the factor structure of the scale. Three factors were generated included Self related ruminations, Social related ruminations, and Spirituality related ruminations. RIS had an internal consistency of (α = 0.89), split-half reliability of (.84). The concurrent validity was found to be 0 .96. Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) generated good fit indices with the three-factor structure. Results were discussed in the light of the cultural context.