A Measure to Assess Student-Instructor Relationships

Abstract

There is a need for an instrument that assesses student-instructor relationships as many experts speculate that close, non-threatening relationships between students and instructors predict positive achievement orientations, academic progress and success. In this paper, we present reliability and additional validity data concerning the Student-Instructor Relationship Scale, a 36-item inventory we developed that taps student- instructor relationship connectedness and anxiety. In the first study, college students completed this instrument twice over a 3-4 week time period and the instrument subscales possessed good test-retest reliability. In the second study, the subscales of the SIRS were associated with student perceptions of test anxiety in a randomly determined class. As predicted, student-instructor connectedness was negatively associated with test anxiety and student-instructor anxiety was positively associated with this construct. Study implications and suggestions for future research are offered.