Measurement Invariance and Relationships Among School Connectedness, Cyberbullying, and Cybervictimization: A Comparison Among Canadian, Chinese, and Tanzanian Adolescents

Abstract

The aim of the present study was to evaluate the measurement invariance of the School Connectedness Scale for Chinese, Canadian, and Tanzanian adolescents, and to explore the inter association between school connectedness and cyberbullying/cybervictimization. Participants included 3872 adolescents from urban settings in China ( N= 2053, M age=16.36 years, SD = 1.14 years; 44.6% boys), Canada ( N = 642, M age = 12.13 years, SD = 0.77 years; 50.1% boys), and Tanzania ( N = 1056 , M age=15.87 years, SD = 2.03 years; 52.8% boys). Adolescents self-reported their cybervictimization and cyberbullying experiences, as well as their perceived school connectedness. Multigroup Confirmatory Factor Analysis revealed an approximate measurement invariance of the scale across the three countries. Chinese students showed the lowest levels of school connectedness while Tanzanian students showed the highest. The findings of the multivariate multigroup regression analyses across the three countries revealed similar relationships between school connectedness and cyberbullying/cybervictimization, thus broadening our understanding of school connectedness and its relationship to cyberbullying/cybervictimization across these three different countries.

Evaluating the Language- and Culture-Related Construct-Irrelevant Variance and Reliability of the Sense of School Belonging Scale: Suggestions for Revision

“…Therefore, all these differences could lead to culture-related construct-irrelevant variance. Since these findings were not reported by previous researchers (Furlong et al, 2011; He et al, 2019; Law et al, 2022; Waters et al, 2010), further research is needed to validate these findings.…”

“…The results suggested that five SSBS items for grades 4 and 8 demonstrated differences at various theta points among these countries. These identified differences indicated a violation of the measurement invariance of the SSBS across different cultural contexts (AERA et al, 2014;Law et al, 2022;Waters et al, 2010). Scale measurement invariance is essential for international assessment programs as it ensures that the measurement of a construct in one cultural or linguistic group is comparable to the measurement of the same construct by the same scale in a different cultural or linguistic group (AERA et al, 2014;Davidov et al, 2014;Jia et al, 2018).…”

“…The results suggested that five SSBS items for grades 4 and 8 demonstrated differences at various theta points among these countries. These identified differences indicated a violation of the measurement invariance of the SSBS across different cultural contexts (AERA et al, 2014; Law et al, 2022; Waters et al, 2010).…”

“…Several studies have adopted the five-item SCS for research purposes, which differs only one item from the 2019 TIMSS SSBS, providing evidence for its robust validity and reliability (Anderman, 2002; Bonny et al, 2000; Furlong et al, 2011; Galliher et al, 2004; Kim et al, 2019; Law et al, 2022; Liu et al, 2021; O’Brennan & Furlong, 2010; Patte et al, 2021; Waters et al, 2010). The internal consistency reliability of the five-item SCS has been found to range from .77 (Bonny et al, 2000; Galliher et al, 2004) to .86 (Furlong et al, 2011), which means it can be considered a reliable instrument for measuring the intended construct in research.…”

“…Furthermore, Waters et al (2010) performed a confirmatory factor analysis, reinforcing the partial measurement invariance of the SCS (χ2/df = 8.44, RMSEA = .05, AGFI = .99). In addition, both Furlong et al (2011) and Law et al (2022) centered their investigations on the psychometric properties and measurement invariance of the SCS, employing multiple-group confirmatory factor analysis. Furlong et al’s work (2011) evidenced that the SCS possesses concurrent validity ( r = .44 to .55) across 18 sociocultural groups, along with configural, metric, and scalar equivalence spanning these groups.…”