Development of a school engagement scale for junior high school students

Abstract

The purpose of the present study was to develop a scale to assess school engagement in junior high school students. Participants were 1,044 junior high school students in grades 7 to 9. Factor analysis resulted in a scale that consisted of emotional engagement, behavioral engagement, and cognitive engagement. The scale had high internal consistency and test-retest reliability. Moreover, the results of correlation analysis indicated that (a) emotional engagement is related to feeling adjusted to the school, (b) behavioral engagement is related to intrinsic aspirations, and (c) cognitive engagement is related to meta-cognitive strategies. These results showed that this developed the school engagement scale for junior high school students had a certain level of reliability and validity. Future directions of this research are discussed.