Abstract
Student engagement is a key factor in academic achievement and degree completion, though there is much debate about the operationalization and dimensionality of this construct. The goal of this paper is to describe the development of an psycho-educational oriented measure – the University Student Engagement Inventory (USEI). This measure draws on the conceptualization of engagement as a multidimensional construct, including cognitive, behavioural and emotional engagement. Participants were 609 Portuguese University students (67 % female) majoring in Social Sciences, Biological Sciences or Engineering and Exact Sciences. The content, construct and predictive validity, and reliability of the USEI were tested. The validated USEI was composed of 15 items, and supported the tri-factorial structure of student engagement. We documented evidence of adequate reliability, factorial, convergent and discriminant validities. USEI’s concurrent validity, with the Utrecht Work Engagement Scale-Student Survey, and the predictive validity for self-reported academic achievement and intention to dropout from school were also observed.
Highlights
In recent years, student engagement, broadly defined as the “students’ willingness to participate in routine school activities, such as attending classes, submitting required work, and following teachers’ directions in class” (Nystrand & Gamoran 1992, p. 14) has received increasing attention by researchers, practitioners, and policy makers (Christenson et al 2012; Fredricks et al 2004; Reschly & Christenson 2012; Salanova et al 2010)
The growing body of research, primarily conducted in the United States and Australia, shows that student engagement can act as an antidote to low academic achievement, student burnout, student lack of resilience, dissatisfaction, and school dropout (Christenson & Reschly 2010; Elmore & Huebner 2010; Finn & Zimmer 2012; Wang & Eccles 2012; Krause & Coates 2008)
We developed a new measure, – the University Student Engagement Inventory (USEI) and describe its psychometric properties in a sample of Portuguese college students
Summary
Student engagement, broadly defined as the “students’ willingness to participate in routine school activities, such as attending classes, submitting required work, and following teachers’ directions in class” (Nystrand & Gamoran 1992, p. 14) has received increasing attention by researchers, practitioners, and policy makers (Christenson et al 2012; Fredricks et al 2004; Reschly & Christenson 2012; Salanova et al 2010). The growing body of research, primarily conducted in the United States and Australia, shows that student engagement can act as an antidote to low academic achievement, student burnout, student lack of resilience, dissatisfaction, and school dropout (Christenson & Reschly 2010; Elmore & Huebner 2010; Finn & Zimmer 2012; Wang & Eccles 2012; Krause & Coates 2008) It can act as a strong mediator between out-of-school variables (e.g., home and family, friends and class-inmates,) (Chen & Astor 2011), teacher-student interactions, In Europe, the engagement construct has emerged mainly in professional and occupational activities, and has been researched primarily in relation to business organizations (Bakker et al 2008; Hirschi 2012; Schaufeli & Bakker 2010). Concerns have been raised about rephrasing items for the workplace to the university setting (Mills et al 2012; Schaufeli & Bakker 2010), as well as its dimensionality in different age-groups of students (Upadaya & Salmela-Aro 2012)
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