Psychometric Properties of Three New National Survey of Student Engagement Based Engagement Scales: An Item Response Theory Analysis

Abstract

We sought to develop and psychometrically describe three new student engagement scales to measure college students’ engagement with their faculty (student-faculty engagement: SFE), community-based activities (CBA), and transformational learning opportunities (TLO) using items selected from the National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE), a widely used, standardized student engagement survey. We used confirmatory factor analysis for ordered-categorical measures, item response theory (IRT), and data from 941 US college students’ NSSE responses. Our findings indicated acceptable construct validity. The scales measured related but separable areas of engagement. IRT demonstrated that scores on the student-faculty engagement scale offered the most precise measurement in the middle range of student-faculty engagement. The CBA scale most reliably measured above average engagement, while TLO scores provided relatively precise descriptions of engagement across this spectrum. Findings support these scales’ utility in institutional efforts to describe “local” student engagement, as well as efforts to use these scales in cross-institutional comparisons.