The High School Characteristics Index as an Individual and Aggregate Response Measure

Middle school improvement and reform: Development and validation of a school-level assessment of climate, cultural pluralism, and school safety.

“…In order to assess the effects of school improvement efforts on students' educational experiences, it is necessary to have reliable measures of schoolwide climate and to be sure that these measures characterize students' experiences within a robust framework of underlying dimensions. Earlier studies have raised concerns regarding both the reliability of climate instruments (Fraser, 1982; Tolsma et al, 1976) and the extent to which these instruments assess a consistent framework of underlying dimensions (Manderscheid et al, 1977; Nelson, 1984; Trickett & Quinlan, 1979; Walker & Richman, 1984). Because of the number and diversity of the schools sampled in the present work, the high levels of student participation within these schools, and the longitudinal nature of our data, we were able to address these concerns in Study 1 and Study 2.…”

“…When large numbers of schools have been included in a sample, as in many of the large-scale assessments from the National Center on Educational Statistics, resource and logistical constraints have led to a tendency to sample relatively small subsets of students within each school to represent each building (Lee & Bryk, 1989; Phillips, 1997). Conversely, other investigators have studied climate using “dense” samples of students (i.e., numerous students within a school) but have included a relatively small and restrictive sampling of schools (e.g., Tolsma, Menne, & Hopper, 1976).…”