ClassroomQual: a scale for measuring the use-of-classrooms-for-teaching–learning service quality

Abstract

This study has two purposes: (1) to develop and refine a measure of the quality of the complementary service named ‘use-of-classrooms-for-teaching–learning’ and (2) to contribute to the empirical evidence regarding the dimensions of the complementary service. The design was cross-sectional of development and scale validation. The research methods were based on factor and psychometric analyses. The study was conducted in three phases. In the initial phase, 30 interviews were conducted in order to collect critical incidents. The second phase involved the improvement of items (self-administered questionnaire of 59 items, Cronbach's α, and exploratory factor analyses). Students from Industrial Engineering at the University of Antioquia comprised the sample (n = 290). In the third phase, the confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was implemented, using Amos 21.0 software. The items that made it through the exploratory stage was 23, classified under 7 latent factors (the initial model in the CFA). Through strategies of re-specification, four more models were arrived at, and finally two models (a 16-item model and a 15-item one), both with seven latent factors, were chosen. These models are two versions of a scale we have called ClassroomQual, which presents satisfactory measures of overall fit, parsimony, reliability, and validity.