Evaluation of scientific articles in social and human sciences: Validation of a measurement scale

The evaluation of scientific articles in the social and human sciences is essential to maintain the rigor of research in these areas, promote the advancement of knowledge, motivate academic collaboration, and disseminate knowledge among the scientific community. The objective of the study was to confirm the factorial structure of the Scale to evaluate Scientific Articles in Social and Human Sciences and to establish its convergent and predictive validity and invariance between gender. For this purpose, a nonexperimental, cross-sectional quantitative instrumental design was used, with a non-probabilistic sample of 405 Peruvian postgraduate teachers. The results showed that the proposed version of the scale corresponds to the theory and the unifactorial structure of the original model. The values of the comparative fit indices were acceptable (CFI=0.948; TLI=0.941); likewise, the goodness of fit was adequate (RMSEA=0.060). Evidence of convergent validity (VME=0.49) and predictive validity was found from the multiple regression analysis, since the scale was positively and significantly associated with the publication of articles, books, book chapters, and papers. It is concluded that the instrument presents adequate psychometric characteristics for its application in the Peruvian context.