Multigroup Construct Validity Evidence of the HOPE Scale: Instrumentation to Identify Low-Income Elementary Students for Gifted Programs

Abstract

Students with exceptional academic potential who come from low-income families are frequently not identified for and consequently are underrepresented in gifted and talented programs. Because of this, new means of identifying such children must be developed. This article presents the findings of exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses conducted on the HOPE Scale, a 13-item teacher-rating instrument designed to identify academic and social components of giftedness in elementary-aged students. Participants included 349 teachers who completed HOPE Scales on 5,995 ethnically and economically diverse students from three rural and two metropolitan school districts in the Midwest. Multigroup confirmatory factor analysis was also used to evaluate measurement invariance between income groups. Findings suggest a two-factor model represents good fit for the data while remaining loyal to the latent constructs of academic and social giftedness. Although showing some legitimate mean differences, invariance test results suggested equivalence of model form, factor loading, and factor variances across income groups. Putting the Research to Use This research has important implications for practice. Frequently, traditional measures of achievement or aptitude under-identify children from low-income families. Concerns exist about the usefulness of teacher-ratings forms or scales in gifted and talented student identification. However, when given specific items or descriptors, teachers can provide useful information concerning student performance. The HOPE Scale provides items that teachers can use to rate specific social and academic behaviors of their students. Findings from this study revealed that teaches can effectively nominate low-income students for gifted programs. Further, items on the HOPE Scale were not biased against low-income students as rated by their teachers, meaning that the social and academic scales provided similar information concerning students in either income group. However, mean scores for student from low-income families on both scales were lower than their non-low income peers, providing evidence that instruments need to be normed on the specific groups for which their use is intended. Practitioners, should not shy away from using teacher nomination instruments, but they should consider the psychometric information available concerning the use of these instruments or rating forms as used with students in demographic groups of intended use. The HOPE Scale, as developed with indicated revisions, will provide educators and researchers with a simple, psychometrically sound instrument to help with identification of underrepresented student for gifted education services.

Evaluating Gifted Identification Practice: Aptitude Testing and Linguistically Diverse Learners

“…Studies also have examined behavior rating scales, with regard both to psychometric issues and to contextual issues that influence these measures' validity and reliability in use (Jarosewich et al, 2002;Matthews, 2007;Peters & Gentry, 2010;Pfeiffer, Petscher, & Jarosewich, 2007;Worrell & Schaefer, 2004). Behavior rating scales commonly are used as a means of narrowing down a pool of potential candidates to those students most likely to be successfully identified to receive gifted program services in subsequent steps of the identification process, specifically in resource-intensive individually administered tests of intelligence.…”

Investigating the Initial Psychometric Properties of Brunei Darussalam's Teacher Rating Scale for Identifying Gifted Students

“…However, in new instruments, such as the Asian Values Scales (Kim, Atkinson, & Yang, 1999), the developers subjected the scales to an exploratory factor analysis to investigate the latent variables in the scale. Similarly, Worrell and Shaefer (2004), in developing the Learning Behaviors Scale (LBS) for academically talented students and Peters, Gentry, Gates, Peterson, and Mann (2008), in developing the Having Opportunities Promotes Excellence (HOPE) Scale, conducted exploratory factor analyses in the initial stages of instrument development to explore the factor structure of the scale. investigations have been undertaken to determine the degree to which the items on the scale appear to measure what they purport to measure, the degree of variability and stability of scores, the number of factors present in the scale, or the factors that could be responsible for the variance among the items.…”

“…An exploratory investigation was initially applied to determine the factor structure of the SRBCSS and the HOPE Scale, and then later followed by a confirmatory factor analysis to further confirm the factor structure (Peters et al, 2008;Renzulli et al, 1976).…”

“…Internal consistency refers to the reliability estimates based on average correlation among items within a test (Nunnally & Bernstein, 2010). To determine internal consistency, developers of SRBCSS, GRS, and HOPE assessed the overall correlation of items within the teacher rating scale for the population (Peters et al, 2008;Renzulli et al, 2009;Rosado, 2008). Although internal consistency is a reliability estimate, it is also part of the investigation for validity because high correlation amongst items or high correlation among groups or clusters of items supports the evidence of internal structure.…”

“…It was especially desirable for the GRS-S as it provided further evidence that the GRS-S could be used to identify gifted students in Puerto Rico (Rosado, 2008). In the teacher rating scales reviewed, the coefficient for internal consistency was conducted as part of factor analysis (Peters et al, 2008;Rosado, 2008). …”