Measuring academic engagement among school students: A scale construction

Pages: 203-209
Poonam Saha (Department of Psychology, University of Calcutta, Kolkata, West Bengal)
Asmita Karmakar ( UGC Senior research fellow, University of Calcutta, Kolkata, West Bengal)
Aparajita Chakroborty (Department of Psychology, Amity University, Kolkata, West Bengal )
Anindita Mukherjee (Clinical Psychologist, Department of Health and Family Welfare, West Bengal)
Manisha Bhattacharya (Clinical Psychologist, Autism Society, West Bengal)
Samannita Lala (Psychologist, Kolkata, West Bengal)
Hillol Mukherjee (Institute of Advance Studies in Education, Tripura)
Atanu Kumar Dogra (Department of Psychology University of Calcutta, Kolkata, West Bengal)
Jishnu Bhattacharya (Neuropsychiatrist, Suri Sadar Hospital, Department of Health and Family Welfare, Govt of West Bengal, West Bengal)
Ashis Mukhopadhyay (Department of Psychiatry, West Bengal Medical Education Service, West Bengal)

The purpose of the present study was to construct a tool to measure academic engagement among school students and to test the tool’s usability. An exploratory cross-sectional study was conducted in this tool construction. The processes include – conceptualization and generation of items with five-point responses, relevant judgement of these items, item validity and identification of factor hierarchical structure, determining psychometric properties of tool. The study was done based on 401 adolescent school students of Tripura state of India, selected through purposive sampling technique and statistical analyses was done using IBM SPSS 22.The S-CVI results show .87 (
S-CVI/average) which indicates high content validity of overall academic engagement scale. EFA on this scale reveals a) initiation, b) Maintaining attention, c)using engagement strategy d) exploration e) Outcome Analysis f)Persistence g) Disengagement Strategy making h) valence in academic process as 8 components among 49 items. Two second order components ‘Perceived valence of academic process’ and ‘execution’ were extracted from these eight factors. Satisfactory Internal consistency of 8 principal components using Cronbach Alpha (.632 -.768) were found. The tool is effective in assessing the academic engagement of adolescent school students.