Reliability Generalization of the School Attitude Assessment Survey-Revised: A Meta-Analytic Structural Equation Modeling Approach

Abstract

The School Attitude Assessment Survey-Revised (SAAS-R) is a popular scale for assessing attitudinal and motivational aspects of students’ academic achievement. However, evidence on key psychometric properties of the SAAS-R such as reliability remains limited. We conducted a reliability generalization study of the SAAS-R using meta-analytic structural equation modeling (MASEM). We included studies reporting an application of the SAAS-R and providing correlation coefficients between the SAAS-R subscales. We searched ERIC, PsycINFO, Academic Search Premier, Supplemental Index, and Web of Science from database inception to July 2023. Analyses were based on 18 independent matrices from 13 studies examining 8712 participants. Our main results, based on a one-stage, correlation-based MASEM approach and with omega total as the reliability measure, yielded an overall reliability estimate of 0.795 (95% CI 0.778–0.811). This suggests that the SAAS-R offers good score reliability for research and practice purposes. Applications using adapted versions obtained on average higher score reliabilities than the original ones. We discuss the implications of these results, which need to be interpreted with caution given the important reporting limitations of the primary studies included.