Measuring School Engagement: Validation and Measurement Equivalence of the Student Engagement Scale on Angolan Male and Female Adolescents
Melchor Gutiérrez *
Department of Educational and Developmental Psychology, Faculty of Psychology, University of Valencia, Spain.
Jose M. Tomás
Department of Methodology for the Behavioral Sciences, Faculty of Psychology, University of Valencia, Spain.
Silvia M. Chireac
Language and Literature Teaching, Faculty of Teacher Training, University of Valencia, Spain.
Patricia Sancho
Department of Psychology and Sociology, Faculty of Social and Human Sciences, University of Zaragoza, Teruel, Spain.
Isabel Romero
Departamento de Ciências da Educação, Instituto Superior de Ciências da Educação, Universidade Katyavala Bwila, Benguela, Angola.
*Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Abstract
School engagement is defined primarily in relation to the participation of the student in academic achievement, and it is viewed as a multidimensional and integrative construct, or macroconstruct made up of several dimensions. The most repeated typology recognizes three specific dimensions: Cognitive, behavioral, and emotional (affective). Recently, a fourth new dimension, personal agency, has been proposed, which reflects students’ constructive engagement with the academic instructions. F. Veiga has been the first to present a self-report instrument, in Portuguese, to measure these four components, the Student Engagement Scale-4 dimensions (SES-4DS). This research has studied the validity and reliability of this scale and its gender invariance in a sample of 2034 Angolan students. Results have shown a clear scalar invariant factor structure, some reliability problems, and adequate convergent and nomological validity. Latent differences were found between males and females for cognitive and affective engagement. Results are discussed in light of the existing literature.
Keywords: Emotional engagement, cognitive engagement, behavioral engagement, agency engagement, gender differences.