CONSTRUCTION OF A LIWI’S SCALE ON PERFECTIONISM OF EARLY ADOLESCENTS

Perfectionism is having both negative and positive aspects. Perfectionism extracts a great toll from early adolescents who think that only through perfection they will be able to gain the fulfilment, success, love, and acceptance of others. Usually, the opposite occurs. Perfectionists may accomplish something but, invariably, their methods will deny them the precise love and acceptance they badly wish to acquire, which leaves them feeling dissatisfied. This article reports on the construction and validation of LiWi’s Scale on Perfectionism of early adolescents through a survey from 90 early adolescents. The Cronbach’s α-value for the selected 32 items were found as 0.790 and this value reflects a good degree of reliability. This scale helps to measure the perfectionist behaviour of an individual and to develop positive perfectionist behaviour among them.


Perfectionism
Perfectionism is an underlying reason for the belief that mistakes are never acceptable by the society and only the highest standards of performance is always appreciated by the society. Perfectionists have completely different standards, behaviour, and beliefs. Perfectionism is also associated with cognitive distortion which exhibit unreality. According to Hamachek (1978), 'perfectionism as a manner of thinking about behaviour' with two different types normal and neurotic perfectionism which leads to continuum of perfectionist behaviours (Kendrick & Johnsen, 2005).

Extensive Research Says…
From the reviewed studies, it is found that perfectionism was studied among early adolescents, school children, parents, adults, patients, athletes and gifted children. Perfectionism was found to have both negative and positive aspects. Negative perfectionism was most strongly related to higher neuroticism but was also associated with lower extraversion and conscientiousness (Egan, Piek & Dyck, 2015). There is also an evidence of dysfunctional cognitions and their associations with perfectionistic thinking. Negative perfectionist had higher levels of anxiety, regret and depression and lower level of satisfaction with life; and it has positive relationship with maximization and emotional suppression (Nyland, 2004).
Perfectionism is the key factor of striving for excellence and it could be more in gifted students than non-gifted students (Chan, 2008). Gifted children who seem well-adjusted may suffer from feelings of inadequacy and perfectionistic tendencies (Nugent, 2000). On researching the contribution of parental involvement on perfectionistic tendencies, better the maternal autonomy and maternal Hewitt involvement, self-beliefs will be optimistic which include self-esteem (McArdle, 2008). (Hewitt.,et al, 2000) found that perfectionism contributed to self-harm and suicidal thoughts. Particularly, socially prescribed perfectionism interacted with daily hassles to predict suicidal potential even after controlling for depression, hopelessness, and prior suicide attempt. Socially prescribed perfectionism acts as a vulnerability factor that is predictive of suicide potential or risk among clinically depressed adolescents and adolescent school children The self-oriented perfectionism was significantly associated with depression and anxiety, whereas socially prescribed perfectionism was significantly correlated with depression, anxiety, social stress, anger-suppression, and outwardly directed anger (Hewitt et al., 2002). Perfectionism is also categorized into adaptive and maladaptive. Maladaptive perfectionism was positively correlated with suicidal ideation (Kaur & Rani, 2012). Perfectionistic behaviour was also clinically proven the pertinence of different dimensions of perfectionism to body dissatisfaction. A lower desired BMI (Body Mass Index) was associated with higher levels of concern over mistakes and organisation, and a smaller ideal silhouette was associated with higher levels of concern over mistakes and doubt about actions and organization (Wade& Tiggemann, 2013). From this it is understood that these flavours of perfectionism have various effects on one's personal and interpersonal life.

Various Types of Perfectionism Scale
Although there are some perfectionism scales which measure the various characteristics of perfectionism, three of the scales were popular and useful in clinical practice (

Generation of Items Pool
Authors reviewed the literature intensively and framed the items pool for perfectionism. When reviewing the literature, it was found that the perfectionism was considered as one of the cognitive distortions (Hewitt & Flett, 1990). The tool was framed with three dimensions namely self-oriented perfectionism, others' oriented perfectionism and socially prescribed perfectionism. The dimension 'self-oriented perfectionism' helps to find the level of perfectionist behaviour to attain unrealistic and impossible standards.
The dimension 'others` oriented perfectionism' intends to find the level of demanding perfection from others and also tries to fulfil the expectations of others with high standards. The dimension 'socially prescribed perfectionism' describes the feeling of fear of rejection by the society and how an early adolescent react to that situation.

Construction of LiWi's Perfectionism Scale (LPS)
To analyse the perfectionism scale, a pool of 55 items were administered to sample of 90 students from six schools in Tirunelveli district, Tamil Nadu, India. The responses were scored as 4, 3, 2, 1 and 0 for positive items and vice versa for negative items. The reliability was found using Cronbach's α-value. The Cronbach's α-value for 55 items is 0.766. Items with low item total correlation value were dropped and thus 23 items were deleted. The Cronbach's α-value for the remaining 32 items were found as 0.790 and this value reflects a good degree of reliability (Field, 2009).
The reliability of LPS was established using test-retest method and the correlation (r) value of it was found to be 0.687. The tool was given to two experts in the field of psychology and one expert in teacher education for content validity. Based on the suggestions and comments given by the experts, the items were modified. Table 2 shows the Cronbach's α-value for the remaining 32 items were found as 0.790 and this value reflects a good degree of reliability (Field, 2009).

Usage of Scale on Perfectionism
The LSP appears to be useful to the early adolescents in scrutinizing whether they have any of these three types of perfectionism. This scale will promote better understanding about selforiented, others' oriented and socially prescribed perfectionism. With this view, educators, parents and early adolescents may analyze the levels of perfectionism. Parents and teachers have to realize that, the process of a task is more important than to be an excellent in a task. Striving for excellence, setting high standards, being order and precise are some of the characteristics of perfectionist people and this LiWi's Scale on Perfectionism helps to identify it.