An Investigation Of A Brief Measure Of School Membership

Adolescence, Summer, 1998 by Winston J. Hagborg

Psychological Sense of School Membership--Brief This 11-item measure is drawn from the longer 18-item scale devised by Goodenow (1993). The original PSSM has demonstrated high internal consistency, with alphas ranging from .71 to .88 for four samples of middle school youth. Hagborg (1994) reported an alpha of .88 for both middle and high school youth. He also found good test-retest reliability (4-week interval) with a sample of 50 eighth graders (r = .78).

The construct validity of the PSSM has been demonstrated through a series of contrast-group comparisons and correlations involving recentness of student enrollment, school attendance, school location (urban versus suburban), and student social status, motivation, and grades, which confirmed theoretically grounded predictions (Goodenow, 1993). Additional evidence is reported by Hagborg (1994), with correlations found in the areas of self-concept, grades, homework time, social-emotional distress, and student perceptions of school climate. The contrast groups (high versus low) did not differ on measures of scholastic ability and achievement, further supporting the PSSM's usefulness as a measure of school adjustment. Overall, students with higher school membership were found to be more motivated, had more positive self-concept, felt greater school satisfaction, had higher academic performance, and reported greater school commitment, more positive teacher-student relations, and lower social-emotional distress (Ha gborg, 1994).

One difficulty with the PSSM is the presence of three underlying factors, which complicates scale interpretation. Guided by factor analysis (Hagborg, 1994), a unidimensional measure of school membership was created with 11 of the scale's original 18 items--the PSSM-brief. Hagborg (1995) has reported PSSM-Brief scores of 3.32 (SD = .75) for middle school students and 3.39 (SD = .67) for high school students, which were comparable to previously reported PSSM scores (Hagborg, 1994): 3.38 (SD = .69) for middle school students and 3.36 (SD = .64) for high school students. The internal consistency of the PSSM-Brief was found to be high, with alphas of .85 (middle school) and .86 (high school). Test-retest reliability (4-week interval) for the 8th-grade sample was moderate (r = .69). Finally, the PSSM-Brief demonstrated high correlations with the PSSM: r = .95 for middle school students and r = .94 for high school students. Thus, preliminary evidence regarding the PSSM-Brief is positive, yet its properties as a sep arate scale, apart from the 18-item version, need further investigation.

Motivation. An 8-item scale drawn from the Learning and Study Strategies Inventory-High School version (LASSI-HS; Weinstein & Palmer, 1990) was used to measure motivation. The LASSI-HS was standardized on more than 2,600 high school students, and Weinstein and Palmer reported an alpha coefficient of .78 for the motivation scale. The mean score for the present sample (32) was somewhat higher than that reported by Weinstein and Palmer (1990), falling at the 65th percentile based on their normative data. However, examination of mean scores across the four grade levels revealed a steady decline, from 34.0 for 5th graders to 30.8 for 8th graders. The 8th graders' mean score fell at the 55th percentile according to Weinstein and Palmer's normative 9th-grade data, indicating an adequate consistency of findings between samples. The internal consistency for this middle school sample was high (alpha = .84). The scale's criterion validity is supported by its significant correlations with homework time (r = .21, p [less than] .05), educational aspirations (r = .22, p [less than] .05), and grades (r = .35, p [less than] .01).