Paulo Dias

Psychometric Properties of the Portuguese Version of the Student Engagement Instrument

Student engagement is an emergent research domain in educational psychology, as research increasingly supports the connection between academic achievement, school-related behaviours, and student engagement. In spite of the important role of student engagement in academic achievement across cultures, little is known about the cross-cultural validation of the factorial structure of students’ school engagement instruments. This study explores the psychometric properties of The Student Engagement Instrument (Appleton & Christenson, 2004) in a population with a culture different from that in which the original version was developed and validated. The participants were 760 high school Portuguese students. Results confirm the factorial structure of the original version and reinforce the empirical support for a six-factor structure. However, some items loaded in different subscales, raising questions about the cultural specificities of the student engagement construct. L’engagement scolaire est un domaine émergent de l’investigation dans la psychologie de l’éducation, dans le même sens où l’investigation est en train de appuyer de plus en plus la liaison entre la réussite scolaire, les comportements rapportés à l’école, et l’engagement scolaire. Malgré le rôle important de l’engagement scolaire dans le succès académique à travers des cultures, peu se sait au sujet de la validation dans ces mêmes cultures de la structure factorielle des instruments de l’engagement scolaire des étudiants. Le but de cette étude était d’explorer les propriétés psychométriques de The Student Engagement Instrument (Appleton & Christenson, 2004) dans une population avec des différences culturelles en relation avec la population utilisée pour le développement et la validation de la version originale. Les participants étaient 760 lycéens étudiants portugais. Les résultats confirment la structure factorielle de la version originale et le soutien empirique d’une structure de six facteurs a été renforcé. Cependant, quelques items appuyés sur différentes sous-échelles soulèvent des questions au sujet des spécificités culturelles de construction de l’engagement scolaire.

The Students' Perceptions of School Success Promoting Strategies Inventory (SPSI): Development and validity evidence based studies

Students perceptions about school success promotion strategies are of great importance for schools, as they are an indicator of how students perceive the school success promotion strategies. The objective of this study was to develop and analyze the validity evidence based of The Students Perceptions of School Success Promoting Strategies Inventory (SPSI), which assesses both individual students perceptions of their school success promoting strategies, and dimensions of school quality. A structure of 7 related factors was found, which showed good adjustment indices in two additional different samples, suggesting that this is a well-fitting multi-group model (p < .001). All scales presented good reliability values. Schools with good academic results registered higher values in Career development, Active learning, Proximity, Educational Technologies and Extra-curricular activities (p < .05). SPSI showed to be adequate to measure within-schools (students within schools) dimensions of school success. In addition, there is preliminary evidence for its adequacy for measuring school success promotion dimensions between schools for 4 dimensions. This study supports the validity evidence based of the SPSI (validity evidence based on test content, on internal structure, on relations to other variables and on consequences of testing). Future studies should test for within- and between-level variance in a bigger sample of schools.