Dimensionality and measurement invariance of the Social Safeness and Pleasure Scale in adolescents from community and residential youth care

Background: Social safeness has been proposed as the individual's perception of the social world as being warmth and soothing. The lack of social safeness has been suggested as a transdiagnostic socio-emotional vulnerability for several mental health difficulties. To date there was no study addressing experiences of social safeness in adolescents. Objective: To validate and study the psychometric properties of the Social Safeness and Pleasure Scale to Portuguese adolescents from community and residential care homes. Participants and setting: A total of 731 Portuguese adolescents from community and residential youth care homes participated on this study. The community sample was composed of adolescents recruited from regular schools (208 boys; 224 girls). The residential youth care sample was composed of adolescents placed in residential care homes (145 boys; 154 girls). Methods: A confirmatory factor analysis was conducted, and measurement invariance investigated. Results: A one-factor solution presented a good fit across all samples and proved to be invariant (configural, metric, scalar and strict measurement invariance). Moreover, internal consistency values were excellent for all samples (α > 0.93) and evidence for construct validity in relation to external variables was found. Means comparisons revealed significant differences between all tested groups. Community adolescents reported higher social safeness in comparison to the adolescents placed in residential care. Within both samples, boys scored higher in the SSPS-A when compared to girls. Conclusions: These findings provide evidence on the SSPS-A validity and its use across diverse adolescent samples.