Factorial equivalence of the Spanish and Portuguese versions of a questionnaire of academic expectations

Abstract

We present the results of a study conducted with first-year students from the Eu-ro-region of Galicia-North Portugal, with the aim of replicating the psychometric properties of the instrument as obtained from a prior version. Participants included 1268 first-year students with ages ranging from 17 to 52 years (Mdn = 18; 7.4% with ages above 23 years). Four-hundred and thirteen students are from the North Spanish region (Galicia, University of Minho) and 855 are from the North Portuguese region (Minho, University of Minho), and 58.1% of the students are women. Students are enrolled in scientific-technological courses (58.4%) and juridical-so-cial studies. We administered the Academic Perceptions Questionnaire-Expectations (APQ-E), which is structured in seven dimensions: Training for career development, Personal and social development, Student mobility, Political engagement and citizenship, Social pressure, Training quality, and Social interaction. The invariance of the factorial model of the APQ-E was tested with LISREL 8.80, based on a bivariate latent model and maximum likelihood estimation, with Satorra and Bentler correction (1994). All items contributed to the representation of the factors, and the factors showed good validity and reliability for country and gender. Therefore, we obtained factorial invariance of the measurement model for country and gender. We present the final version of the common questionnaire for Portugal and Spain, and for women and men.