Assessing the Unit of Measurement for School Climate through Psychometric and Outcome Analyses of the School Climate Survey

This study examines the appropriate unit of theory of school climate while simultaneously conducting a psychometric analysis of a modification of the School Climate Survey for an elementary school population. A conceptualization of school climate as an individual-level property unique to each school...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Educational and psychological measurement 2003-12, Vol.63 (6), p.1002-1019
Main Author: van Horn, M. Lee
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Academic Achievement
Biological and medical sciences
Educational Environment
Educational psychology
Elementary Education
Elementary Schools
Factor Structure
Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology
Measurement
Orientation. Evaluation
Polls & surveys
Psychological tests
Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry
Psychology. Psychophysiology
Psychometrics
Schools
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:This study examines the appropriate unit of theory of school climate while simultaneously conducting a psychometric analysis of a modification of the School Climate Survey for an elementary school population. A conceptualization of school climate as an individual-level property unique to each school participant is compared to the idea that climate is a characteristic of the school with school participants having the role of informants. These two theories are compared by testing their differing implications. The School Climate Survey is found to have a stable and identical factor structure both within and between schools, ratings by different respondent groups are found to be moderately correlated, and average school climate within each school is found to predict a statistically significant amount of the between-school variation in children’s academic achievement and cognitive functioning. Differences between individual raters within each school are not found to have a meaningful relationship to child outcomes. It is concluded that the School Climate Survey is a valid and useful measure of school climate and the school-level theory is found to have the strongest support.
ISSN:0013-1644
1552-3888
DOI:10.1177/0013164403251317