Development of the Inventory of Psychological Maladjustments for Chilean University Students

Based on a set of items (Cova et al., 2007), the Inventory of Psychological Maladjustments for University Students (IDP-EU) was developed to assess four areas of prevalent maladjustments in this population: self-destructive behaviors, eating maladjustments, problematic consumption of substances, and academic stress. A sample of 1935 undergraduate students from four Chilean state universities answered the previous set of items and, as external validation criteria, the DASS-21 and a version of the ASSIST. Exploratory and confirmatory analysis of measurement and structural models, and reliability examinations were carried out. The results confirmed that the IDP-EU has the hypothesized structure of four correlated factors, which show, in general, theoretically expected associations with the external criteria and, in addition, adequate reliabilities. These results are discussed in terms of their theoretical scope, methodological limitations and practical implications.