Abstract

The study conducted a factor analysis of Retirement Anxiety Scale (RAS) for secondary school teachers. It developed a set of appropriate and homogeneous items on retirement anxiety suitable for Nigerian school teachers. It also determined the reliability indices of the scale and established its factor structure. The study population comprised all secondary school teachers in Osun state. Teachers that had less than ten years to retire from the service were the targeted population. A sample size of 204 teachers was purposively selected from four randomly selected local government of the state, based on the years left in service. The selected teachers completed the Retirement Anxiety Scale (RAS). The result was subjected to Principal Component Analysis with varimax rotation (PCA). The results of the PCA revealed that the communality h² of each item was more than 0.5, which implied a satisfactory quality. The KMO > 0.8 showed that the data were sufficiently enough to undergo factor analysis, while the Barlett sign p < 0.001 revealed a sensible PCA. The reliability coefficient Cronbach α was statistically significant (0.863) indicating a high degree of internal consistency. The study concluded that the RAS instrument was valid and reliable for measuring retirement anxiety among secondary school teachers and also found suitable for Nigerian schools. The six-components released by the PCA could be used as a guide for school counsellors in pre-retirement counselling of secondary school teachers.

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