Validation of the Higher Education Student Engagement Scale in use for Program Evaluation

Abstract

The primary purpose of this study is to validate a student engagement measure for its use in evaluation of a learning assistant (LA) program. A series of psychometric evaluations were made for both the original scale of Higher Education Student Engagement Scale (HESES) and its adapted version designed to be used in gauging the effectiveness of educational interventions. Those evaluations included: reliability evidence based on internal consistency, internal structure assessment, and relations to external variables. In addition, an item-level analysis was conducted to identify malfunctioning items that do not effectively serve the intended use of the scale. Results generally supported the validity of the scale for the intended use, but also suggested a further investigation of the factor structure.