Development and Validation of the Social Motivation Scale in People With Disabilities

Objective: Social effectiveness is key to success in the labor market. For decades, social motivation has been empirically studied as both a presumed cause and consequence of social effectiveness. Yet, few direct measures of social motivation exist, and even fewer have been validated with a disability population. This study provides the measurement structure and psychometric properties of a newly created measure of social motivation tested with a general disability population. Research Design: Participants included 1,013 US adults with disabilities. Exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) were implemented to validate the measure. Results: Results of the EFA suggest that a reduced 26-item inventory exhibits a 5-factor structure in a general population of people with disabilities. These results were confirmed with the CFA. Concurrent validity analysis revealed that most factors were significantly associated with relevant psychosocial variables in the expected directions.