Effects of validity screening items on adolescent survey data.

Abstract

In 2 studies, we examined the use of validity screening items in adolescent survey data. In each study, adolescent respondents were asked whether they were telling the truth and paying attention in answering survey questions. In Study 1 (N = 7,801), the prevalence rates of student risk behaviors were significantly lower after inappropriate (invalid) responders were screened out of the sample. In addition, confirmatory and multigroup factor analyses demonstrated significant differences between the factor structures of school climate scales with valid versus invalid responders. In Study 2, student perceptions of school climate were correlated with teacher perceptions in 291 schools. A bootstrap resampling procedure compared the correlations obtained with valid versus invalid responding students in each school and found that valid responders had more positive views of school conditions and produced higher correlations with teacher perceptions. These findings support the value of validity screening items in improving the quality of adolescent survey data.

Multilevel multi-informant structure of the Authoritative School Climate Survey.

“…1%) of surveys for failure to complete the sur vey, com pleting the survey too rapidly, admitting that their answers were not truthful on validity questions, or reporting the wrong grade level (Cornell, Klein, Konold, & Huang, 2012;Cornell, Fovegrove, & Baly, 2014). The overall student participation rate was estimated to be 84.8% (43,805 student participants from a pool of 51,638 students asked to participate).…”

Authoritative School Climate and Student Academic Engagement, Grades, and Aspirations in Middle and High Schools

“…Students answering some of them or only a few or none of them were omitted from the sample. Previous research with independent samples of middle and high school students found that the use of these items can identify students who tend to give exaggerated reports of risk behavior and more negative views of school conditions than other students (Cornell, Klein, Konold, & Huang, 2012;Cornell, Lovegrove, & Baly, 2014).…”

An Examination of Differences in Moral Disengagement and Empathy Among Bullying Participant Groups

“…Teachers instructed students to keep their answers private and complete the survey in silence. Aware of societal expectations for behaviour, youth tend to exaggerate positive behaviours on self-report surveys (Carifio, 1994;Cornell, Klein, Konold, & Huang, 2012;Furlong, Sharkey, Felix, Tanigawa, & Green, 2009). To attend to this issue, the survey included social desirability questions in order to reduce the chance that students provided more socially acceptable responses to questions about bullying than is in fact true for them.…”