Validation of the Spanish adaptation of the School Atitude Assessment Survey-Revised using multidimensional Rasch analysis

Abstract

Abstract:The School Attitude Assessment Survey-Revised (SAAS-R) was developed by McCoach and Siegle (2003b) and validated in Spain by Miñano, Castejón, and Gilar (2014) using Classical Test Theory. The objective of the current research is to validate SAAS-R using multidimensional Rasch analysis. Data were collected from 1398 students attending different high schools. Principal Component Analysis supported the multidimensional SAAS-R. The item difficulty and person ability were calibrated along the same latent trait scale. 10 items were removed from the scale due to misfit with the Rasch model. Differential Item Functioning revealed no significant differences across gender for the remaining 25 items. The 7-category rating scale structure did not function well, and the subscale goal valuation obtained low reliability values. The multidimensional Rasch model supported 25 item-scale SAAS-R measures from five latent factors. Therefore, the advantages of multidimensional Rasch analysis are demonstrated in this study.

Diagnostic Assessment of School Readiness

“…By doing so, we improved the sensitivity and accuracy of the DIFER test in assessing school readiness. This aligns with some studies that removed some items for their test accuracy (Veas et al, 2017;Yan & Mok, 2012;Ziv, 2013).…”

Current Researches in Educational Sciences V

“…The Significance of the Study Students' attitudes towards school and their general self-efficacy are closely related to many variables like academic achievement, school engagement, self-regulated learning, and metacognitive learning. A positive attitude towards school and high general self-efficacy levels not only reduce the risk of school dropout but also promote learning motivation, increase students' school attendance rates and improve academic achievement (McCoach, 2000;Veas et al, 2017). The present study aims to determine the attitudes towards school and general self-efficacy levels of students at different levels of education through a cross-sectional survey and to examine the moderating effect of the level of education on the relationship between these two variables.…”

“…One of the variables to be effective in attitudes towards school is gender. Many researchers state that attitudes towards school vary by gender, and most of them report that females hold more positive attitudes towards school than males (Adıgüzel & Karadaş, 2013;Erkman et al, 2010;Marks, 1998;Veas et al, 2017). However, Cheng & Chan, (2003) found higher attitudes towards school in males, which was associated with the tradition of more pressure for academic success on men than women in the Chinese culture.…”

“…Then, student performances come out in line with these expectations. Thus, low-grade averages affected by teacher expectations is one of the strongest determiners of attitudes towards school (Jessor et al, 1995;Stern, 2012;Veas et al, 2017). In other words, students with a moderate and high level of achievement hold higher attitudes towards school than those with low achievement (Mccoach & Siegle, 2003).…”

“…In this regard, studying the variables affecting students' academic achievement and affective characteristics towards school would be beneficial. Many researchers associate attitudes towards school with such variables as students' academic achievement, school attendance rates, peer relationships, peer bullying, positive teacher-student interaction, and school motivation (Alıcı, 2013;Cheng & Chan, 2003;İlhan, 2017;Veas et al, 2017) Attitudes towards school are formed by students' positive or negative feelings, opinions and behaviors related to school and affect their school motivation and self-regulation skills (Eagly & Chaiken, 2007;Stern, 2012) Students with a positive attitude towards school are seen to have better learning motivation and self-regulation skills while students' selfregulation skills decrease when they are not motivated, which in turn affects their school achievement negatively (Stern, 2012) Moreover, attitudes towards school also influence students' school attendance, and students with a positive attitude towards school have lower absence rates (Adıgüzel & Karadaş, 2013).…”