Construction and validation of academic competency evaluation scale among high school students in Tabriz

Abstract

The acquisition and promotion of Students' academic competence in the scholastic process is a desirable outcome for any educational system. Having a measure for accurately assessing students’ academic competence is very important. Therefore, the goal of this study was construction and validation of the academic competency questionnaire and identification of its dimensions and components. The population of interest includes all male and female first year high school students in Tabriz. A sample of 660 students participated in the study through multi-stage cluster sampling method. The initial instrument was developed based on the Model of Academic Competence and Motivation (McGrew, 2013). Validity of the instrument was determined by utilizing the Content Validity Ratio (CVR), exploratory factor analysis and concurrent correlation with the Motivated Strategies for Learning Questionnaire (MSLQ). The results of exploratory factor analysis affirmed 5 significant factors for the “orientation towards self” subscale, 6 factors for the “orientation towards learning” subscale and 8 factors for the “orientation towards others” subscale. The goodness-of-fit indicators obtained from the second-order confirmatory factor analysis also confirmed this structure including three main subscales, 19 factors and 109 items. In general, the research findings showed that this questionnaire has the necessary psychometric properties to assess the academic competence of high school students and can be used as a useful tool in this field.