Content area
Full Text
Learning Environ Res (2008) 11:179193 DOI 10.1007/s10984-008-9043-6
ORIGINAL PAPER
Jeffrey P. Dorman
Received: 8 June 2007 / Accepted: 1 August 2007 / Published online: 24 June 2008 Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2008
Abstract This article describes the validation of scores on actual and preferred forms of the What Is Happening In this Class? (WIHIC). The WIHIC is a 56-item instrument that assesses seven classroom environment dimensions: Student Cohesiveness, Teacher Support, Involvement, Investigation, Task Orientation, Cooperation and Equity. A sample of 978 secondary school students from Australia responded to actual and preferred forms of the WIHIC. Separate conrmatory factor analyses for the actual and preferred forms supported the seven-scale a priori structure of the instrument. Fit statistics indicated a good t of the models to the data. The use of multitrait-multimethod modelling with the seven scales as traits and the two forms of the instrument as methods supported the WIHICs construct validity. This research has provided strong evidence of the sound psychometric properties of the WIHIC.
Keywords Actual classroom environment Multitrait-multimethod modelling
Preferred classroom environment What Is Happening In this Class? (WIHIC)
Validity
Introduction
During the past 35 years, much research on the psychosocial aspects of classroom environments has been conducted. Overwhelmingly this research has employed instruments to assess salient dimensions of the classroom environment. While much effort has been put into the development and validation of these instruments using standard psychometric approaches to instrument design (e.g. internal consistency reliability, exploratory factor analysis), only a handful of studies have taken advantage of advances in the methods for validation of instruments through the use of conrmatory factor analysis (CFA) within a covariance matrix framework (e.g. Kunter and Baumert 2006). Multitrait-multimethod modelling was employed by Aldridge et al. (2004) in validating actual and preferred forms
J. P. Dorman (&)
School of Education, Australian Catholic University, P.O. Box 456, Virginia 4014, QLD, Australia e-mail: [email protected]
Use of multitrait-multimethod modelling to validate actual and preferred forms of the What Is Happening In this Class? (WIHIC) questionnaire
123
180 Learning Environ Res (2008) 11:179193
of the Technology-Rich Outcomes-Focused Learning Environment Inventory (TROFLEI). The present article extends learning environment research by reporting the use of CFA in multitrait-multimethod (MTMM) modelling to investigate the structure of one contemporary classroom environment instrumentthe What...