Measuring homesickness

The homesickness scale was informed by relevant literature and further developed from information obtained through focus groups and interviews with stakeholders, students and families. Items in the scale were drawn from Fisher’s work with young people in defining homesickness (Fisher et al., 1990) including: missing family, missing home environment, need to return home, missing friends, feeling a loss of ways of life, crying, lost and lonely, feeling unhappy, feeling depressed, regret for the decision, hating new place, feeling ill, feeling disoriented and no confidence. From this list the decision was made to leave out the categories missing friends, regret for the decision and feeling disoriented as the qualitative data from this thesis’ focus groups did not support the inclusion of these categories. However, student focus group data supported the inclusion of the following additional statements; ‘Wanting to avoid school because I felt so homesick’, ‘Was not able to concentrate in class because I was missing my family’, ‘Worried about my family’ and ‘Had trouble getting to sleep because of homesickness.’ A five-point Likert-type scale was used to measure frequency levels from ‘This has never happened to me’ (1), ‘Once or twice’ (2), ‘Every few weeks’ (3), ‘About once a week’ (4) to ‘Most days’ (5). The variables, means and Eigenvalues of the factors after rotation and Cronbach’s Alpha are shown in Table 8 and Table 9.

An item was included in the student instrument to strengthen the homesickness data and to assess the correlation between the single item and the multiple response question. This item asked students the question ‘How often did you feel homesick?’ The descriptors in this instrument were generated using the information obtained from the qualitative component of the study. Students selected from seven descriptors, which were assigned values of between 1-7 ‘I have not felt homesick’ (1), ‘I felt homesick when I first started boarding, but it got better within a few weeks’ (2), ‘I felt homesick when I first started boarding and it took a while for me to feel better’ (3), ‘I felt homesick when I first started boarding and it took a long time for me to feel better’ (4), ‘I feel homesick every time I come back to school from home’ (5), ‘I feel homesick almost all of the time’ (6) and ‘I feel homesick all of the time’ (7). Data collected from this scale had few responses to values 6 and 7, hence these responses were combined and labelled ‘Almost always homesick’. Pearson’s correlation was used to

76 examine the correlation between the direct question ‘How often have you felt homesick’ and the 15 specific categories of homesickness. Fair to moderate correlation was found between 13 of the 15 variables r = 0.319 – r = 0.538, with the two variables not displaying a significant relationship with the direct question being ‘Felt I hate the boarding house’ r = 0.183 and ‘Felt sad about having to be a boarder’ r = 0.271.

A post hoc factor analysis was conducted on the homesickness scale using an Eigenvalue cut off of 1.00 to determine if there were underlying constructs or themes in the data. The data were subjected to maximum likelihood and rotated to optimise the factor structure using Varimax with Kaiser normalisation. Three factors emerged with the variance once rotated being 22.1% (Factor 1), 18.2% (Factor 2) and 16.3% (Factor 3) (Table 3.9), this equates to explaining 56.7% of variation in the data, which Field (2009) describes as acceptable for the sample size of the study. The largest factors for each variable were grouped and labelled: Psychosomatic, Separation distress and Grief and Loss. Psychosomatic (Factor 1) included statements ‘Got upset / cried because I felt homesick’, Felt physically sick (sore / upset tummy, headache, tight chest) because I was so homesick’, ‘Felt a lack of confidence’, ‘Wanting to avoid school because I felt so homesick’, ‘Was not able to concentrate in class because I was missing my family’ and ‘Had trouble getting to sleep because of homesickness’. Separation distress (Factor 2) included statements ‘Missed my family’, ‘Missed my family environment’, ‘Felt like I needed to go home’ and ‘Worried about my family. Grief and loss (Factor 3) included statements ‘Feeling like I have lost my normal way of life’, ‘Felt lost / lonely’, ‘Felt unhappy’, Felt sad about being a boarder’ and ‘Felt I hate the boarding house’. Cronbach’s alpha for factor 1 was α =0.878 for factor 2 it was α = 0.833 and for factor 3 the alpha was α = 0.795.

Table 8. Eigenvalues and variance of factors after rotation - homesickness Factor Rotation Sums of Squared Loadings

Total % of Variance Cumulative %

1 3.32 22.12 22.12

2 2.73 18.20 40.32

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Table 9. Rotated Factor Matrix - homesickness

Homesickness variables Factor Psychosomatic Separation distress Grief and Loss Missed my family .227 .859 .109 Missed my family environment / home .179 .756 .208

Felt like I needed to go

home .307 .499 .415

Worried about my family .401 .540 .204

Feeling like I have lost my

normal way of life .244 .263 .455

Felt lost / lonely .397 .373 .494

Felt unhappy .227 .377 .627

Felt sad about having to be

a boarder .213 .143 .683

Felt I hate the boarding

house .138 .020 .689

Got upset / cried because I

felt homesick .573 .419 .223

Felt physically sick (sore / upset tummy, headache, tight chest) because I was so homesick

.704 .107 .196

Felt a lack of confidence .478 .350 .354

Wanting to avoid school

because I felt so homesick .768 .155 .340

Was not able to concentrate in class because I was missing my family

.704 .329 .177

Had trouble getting to sleep

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3.3.4.2.4 Homesickness help-seeking

During the qualitative interviews and focus groups parents and students described the strategies they felt were and were not helpful when young people experienced homesickness. These data were used to develop a scale to measure the helpfulness of strategies employed by students when they felt homesick. The item asked students ‘When you felt homesick, did you find any of the following helpful?’ Included in the item were sixteen statements (Table 11) (not including ‘other’) with response options including ‘Very helpful’ (1), ‘Somewhat helpful’ (2), ‘Not at all helpful’ (3) and ‘I did not do this’ (4) (See Appendix 2). Following the pilot test of the instrument the statement ‘Listening to music or talking books’ was changed to become two separate statements: ‘Listening to music’ and ‘Listening to talking books’. The change was in response to focus group feedback following the pilot survey where many students reported listening to music but not listening to talking books; hence the categories were separated. The variables, means and Eigenvalues of the factors after rotation and Cronbach’s Alpha are shown in Table 10 and Table 11.

A post hoc factor analysis was conducted on the homesickness scale using an Eigenvalue cut off point of 1.00 to determine if there were underlying constructs or themes in the data. The data were subjected to maximum likelihood and rotated to optimise the factor structure using Varimax with Kaiser normalisation. Three factors emerged with the variance once rotated being 19.2% (Factor 1), 17.4% (Factor 2) and 14.6% (Factor 3) (Table 10), the combined factors accounted for 51.3% of variance which Field (2009) describes as acceptable for a data set of this size. The largest factors for each variable were grouped and labelled: ‘Parental contact’, ‘Keeping busy’ and ‘Conversing with staff/students’. One variable ‘Talking with friends’ was found to be cross loading on Factors 2 (.428) and 3 (.482). This variable was included in both of these factors as it was deemed to be of equal relevance to both keeping busy and conversing with staff and students. ‘Parental contact’ (Factor 1) included the statements ‘Talking to my parents on the phone’, ‘Text messaging my parents’, ‘Going out on leave with my parents’, ‘Going on leave with someone other than my parents’, ‘Emailing my parents’ and ‘Knowing when my parents would next be visiting me or taking me on leave’. ‘Keeping busy’ (Factor 2) included the statements

79 ‘Talking to friends’, ‘Keeping busy’, ‘Trying to have a positive attitude’, ‘Listening to music’, ‘Reading books/magazines’, ‘Exercising or playing sport’ and ‘Being able to find a quiet private place where I could spend time on my own’. ‘Conversing with staff/students’ (Factor 3) included the statements ‘Talking to friends’, ‘Listening to talking books’ ‘Talking to a boarding house staff member’ and ‘Talking to older boarding students’. Field (2009) recommends making sense of the factors by exploring their themes and taking this into consideration when accepting values less than 0.4. With this in mind the cut off for this analysis was set at 0.392 and above for inclusion into the factor. Cronbach’s alpha for Factor 1 was α =0.847 for Factor 2 was α = 0.747 and for Factor 3 was found to be α = 0.876.

Table 10. Eigenvalues and variance of after rotation – homesickness help- seeking

Factor Rotation Sums of Squared Loadings

Total % of Variance Cumulative %

1 3.07 19.19 19.19

2 2.79 17.43 36.62

3 2.34 14.63 51.25

Table 11. Rotated Factor Matrix – homesickness help seeking

Homesickness help-seeking variables Factor Parental Contact Keeping Busy Conversing with staff/students

Talking to my parents on the

phone .601 .372 .228

Text messaging my parents .544 .241 .345

Going out on leave with my

parents .745 .203 .125

Going on leave with someone

other than my parents .514 .271 .225

80 would next be visiting me or

taking me on leave

Emailing my parents .424 .190 .362

Talking to a boarding house

staff member .291 .192 .590

Listening to talking books .069 .211 .426

Talking to an older boarding

student .180 .246 .739

Talking to friends .301 .428 .482

Keeping busy .373 .655 .309

Trying to have a positive

attitude .356 .788 .230

Listening to music .293 .597 .301

Reading books/magazines .189 .470 .376

Exercising or playing sport .280 .512 .431

Being able to find a quiet, private place where I could spend time on my own

.294 .392 .284

Homesickness help-seeking statements were recoded, responses ‘Very helpful’ and ‘Somewhat helpful’ were scored as (1) and ‘Not at all helpful’ and ‘I did not do this’ were scored as (0).