Evaluating the psychometric quality of school connectedness measures: A systematic review

Abstract

Introduction There is a need to comprehensively examine and evaluate the quality of the psychometric properties of school connectedness measures to inform school based assessment and intervention planning. Objective To systematically review the literature on the psychometric properties of self-report measures of school connectedness for students aged six to 14 years. Methods A systematic search of five electronic databases and gray literature was conducted. The COnsensus-based Standards for the selection of heath Measurement INstruments (COSMIN) taxonomy of measurement properties was used to evaluate the quality of studies and a pre-set psychometric criterion was used to evaluate the overall quality of psychometric properties. Results The measures with the strongest psychometric properties was the School Climate Measure and the 35-item version Student Engagement Instrument exploring eight and 12 (of 15) school connectedness components respectively. Conclusions The overall quality of psychometric properties was limited suggesting school connectedness measures available require further development and evaluation.