Abstract
School climate is a significant determinant of students’ behavioral problems and academic achievement. In this study, we developed the Japan School Climate Inventory (JaSC) to see whether it measures school climate properly. To do so, we investigated whether or not the measurement with JaSC varies across sub-groups of varying grade and of gender and examined the relationship between the perception of school climate and the psychological and behavioral traits at individual levels in a sample of Japanese elementary and junior high school students (n = 1399; grade 4–9). The results showed that the measurement was consistent, since single-factor structures, factor loadings and thresholds of the items were found not to vary across sub-groups of the participants. The participants’ perception of school climate was associated positively with quality of life, especially in school (β = 0.152, p < 0.001) and associated negatively with involvement in ijime (bullying) as “victim” and “bully/victim” (β = −0.098, p = 0.001; β = −0.188, p = 0.001, respectively) and peer relationship problems (β = −0.107, p = 0.025). JaSC was found to measure school climate consistently among varying populations of Japanese students, with satisfactory validity.
Highlights
The earliest forms of the concept of school climate can be traced back more than 100 years.Perry [1] described how students are affected by the quality of their environment and highlighted the crucial influence of school culture or climate, on students’ outcomes
The model fit of the metric model, in which all factor loadings were constrained across the sex groups, was significantly different from the configural invariance model (∆χ2 (∆31) = 51.9, p = 0.01) but the differences of comparative fit index (CFI) and root mean square error of approximation (RMSEA) were within the criteria of invariance
The results of the chi-square difference tests between the configural and metric models were significant but the differences of CFI and RMSEA were within the criteria of invariance
Summary
Perry [1] described how students are affected by the quality of their environment and highlighted the crucial influence of school culture or climate, on students’ outcomes. After confirming that a single factor was the best solution, we probed measurement invariance within the framework of confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) to ascertain whether the factor structure and factor loadings could be reproduced in the different sub-groups (i.e., boys and girls; elementary and junior high school). The equality of the factor loadings between the two sub-groups was examined (metric model). After metric invariance was found, the scalar model was tested by constraining the factor loadings and thresholds to be equal across the sub-groups
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