School climate is an essential ingredient of student well-being and academic success. Although it has been studied extensively, only a few well-validated instruments are available for the assessment of school climate. The aim of this study was to assess the factor validity and measurement invariance of the Socio-educational Environment…

The structure of academic self-concept (ASC) is assumed to be multidimensional and hierarchical. This methodological review considers the most central models depicting the structure of ASC: a higher-order factor model, the Marsh/Shavelson model, the nested Marsh/Shavelson model, a bifactor representation based on exploratory structural equation…

The Transtheoretical Model (TTM) conceptualizes change as a process with five identifiable stages. Each stage has psychological characteristics that are manifestations of an underlying continuum of change. Surprisingly few studies have applied the TTM to understand the process involved with academic development. The objective of this study was to…

"Grit" is defined as passion and perseverance for achieving long-term goals and consists of two proposed subcomponents: consistency of interests and perseverance of effort. It has become a much-discussed construct even though research on its underlying factor structure has produced inconclusive results. Furthermore, grit as measured by…

This study focuses on the development of a measurement instrument to identify Middle and High School mathematics and science teachers' beliefs about the main factors of underrepresentation of African American students in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) fields. The research method using the stages of instrument development…

Social-emotional health influences youth developmental trajectories and there is growing interest among educators to measure the social-emotional health of the students they serve. This study replicated the psychometric characteristics of the Social Emotional Health Survey (SEHS) with a diverse sample of high school students (Grades 9-12; N =…

This research aimed to construct and validate the School Conflict Negotiation Effectiveness Questionnaire (SCNEQ). This objective is both based on the increasing relevance of the area of constructive conflict management in schools and also in the scarcity of instruments that try to measure these dimensions in the educational context. We used two…

In this study, we assessed the invariance in the factor structure underlying English-language proficiency for two groups of adolescent learners in Japan: students in middle school (ages 13-15 years) and students in high school (ages 16-18 years). Language proficiency was measured using the "TOEFL Junior"® Comprehensive test, an…

Vertical scales are widely used in educational assessment as a basis for considering grade-to-grade changes in student performance. Typically, the underlying construct is assumed to be essentially unidimensional; however, if there is a change in the measured construct across grades, this assumption may be untenable. Developing a multidimensional…

As part of universal screening efforts in schools, validated measures that identify internalizing distress are needed. One promising available measure, the Depression, Anxiety, and Stress Scales-21 (DASS-21), has yet to be thoroughly investigated with adolescents in the United States. This study investigated the underlying factor structure of the…

The aim of the present study was to determine the factor structure of the Positive Life Assets Scale (PLAS), a new measure to identify both internal and external life assets among high school students in Thailand, and to further examine the usefulness of the PLAS for a comprehensive, developmental, and strengths-based school and community…

The Learning and Study Strategies Inventory (LASSI) is a very popular tool for measuring the learning and study strategies of high school and college students. Prior research with the LASSI has supported the originally proposed model with three latent traits, with minor variations among the contributing subtests contributing to those traits.…

The Test for Creative Thinking-Drawing Production (TCT-DP) is designed as an effective drawing-based instrument for measuring creative potential. Many studies report adaptation efforts in other cultures pointing out good psychometric properties of the instrument nonetheless revealing also some trouble spots. The present study includes adaptation…

According to the Simple View of Writing, four primary skills are necessary for successful writing (Berninger & Amtmann, 2003; Berninger & Winn, 2006). Transcription skills (e.g., handwriting, spelling) represent lower-order cognitive tasks, whereas text generation skills (e.g., ideation, translation) represent higher-order…

The temporal ordering of depression, aggression, and victimization has important implications for theory, policy, and practice. For a representative sample of high school students (Grades 7-10; N = 3,793) who completed the same psychometrically strong, multiitem scales 6 times over a 2-year period, there were reciprocal effects between…