Abstract
Noncognitive characteristics are gaining importance in addressing the persistent challenges facing youth in diverse settings. Measurement invariance of two youth developmental assets, Support and Positive Identity, is evaluated across grade levels and English language learner (ELL) subgroups of Latino students in 6th through 12th grade. Explanatory item response modeling is used to evaluate measurement invariance. The measurement of Latino students’ sense of support and positive identity varies depending on their developmental stage and language status. Students at later grade levels tend to require higher levels of Support to endorse items in the Support measure. There is a nonlinear relation between students’ grade level and item functioning for Positive Identity; students’ transition from middle to high school may influence the way they respond to Positive Identity items. This has implications for the measurement of assets with diverse Latino youth and for Latino youth development.
Highlights
Social-emotional learning, developmental assets, and other so-called noncognitive characteristics are gaining presence in national dialogues addressing the persistent challenges facing youth
We evaluated the role of two student characteristics, English language learner (ELL) status conceptualized as a potential source of DIF and grade level conceptualized as a potential source of parameter drift across developmental stages
The infit and outfit fit indices indicate the extent to which the data matched the Rasch model (Bond & Fox, 2001), where values between 0.75 and 1.3 indicate adequate item fit (Smith, Schumacker, & Bush, 1998). Based on these suggested cutoff values, there is lack of adequate item fit for some items in both Support and Positive Identity, signaling that item difficulties may not be similar across ELL status and grade level
Summary
Social-emotional learning, developmental assets, and other so-called noncognitive characteristics are gaining presence in national dialogues addressing the persistent challenges facing youth. These are important components of 21st-century skills (Griffin, McGaw, & Care, 2012). The NRC argued that cognitive, intrapersonal, and interpersonal skills can be taught and learned and contribute to successful adult outcomes These skills are found in the Common Core State Standards (Kyllonen, 2012) and include factors that shape school performance (Farrington et al, 2012), college and career readiness and success (Dymnicki, Sambolt, & Kidron, 2013), and more generally, positive youth development and resilience (Benson, Scales, Hamilton, & Sesma, 2006).
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