Psychometric properties of the Romanian version of the School Attitude Assessment Survey-Revised
Keywords:
attitude toward school, SAAS-R, Romanian version, psychometric properties, adolescentsAbstract
The assessment of attitude toward school among adolescents has become an important area of research in educational psychology. One of the measures available is the School Attitude Assessment Survey-Revised (SAAS-R; McCoach & D. Siegle, 2003). This instrument was designed to measure factors that may distinguish underachievers from achievers in a secondary school setting, i.e. academic self-perception, general attitude toward school, attitude toward teachers, goal valuation, and motivation/self-regulation. The objective of the current study is to test the validity and internal consistency of the Romanian version of the SAAS-R. Data were collected from 823 Romanian adolescents attending different theoretical and vocational/technical high schools. Global academic achievement was obtained from school records (N = 121). Using confirmatory factor analysis with AMOS 20.00, three hypothetical metric models were tested. We also examined the Cronbach’s alpha in order to estimate the internal consistency. The metric model with five first-order correlated factors and six pairs of correlated errors fitted the input data the most satisfactory. The scores in our study showed internal consistency reliability coefficient of at least .81 on each of the five factors. Convergent validity is supported through correlations in the expected directions between the SAAS-R factors and students’ engagement with school and school satisfaction. Criterion-related (predictive) validity is proven through significant correlations between scores for goal valuation and motivation/self-regulation and adolescents’ grade point average at the end of 2018-2019 school year. Compared with boys, girls obtained significantly higher scores on goal valuation and motivation/self-regulation. The results indicate that the Romanian version of the SAAS-R is a measure that can be used to explore the dimensions of attitude toward school among adolescents.
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