The School Climate and Academic Mindset Inventory (SCAMI): Confirmatory Factor Analysis and Invariance Across Demographic Groups

Abstract

School climate is a multidimensional construct of the quality of a student's academic environment, often subsuming dimensions such as safety, instructional practices, social relationships, school facilities, and school connectedness. Positive school climate has beneficial effects on a wide range of adjustment variables in youth, including academic achievement, mental health, school attendance and graduation, and school-based behavior. Studies regarding school climate assessment have burgeoned in recent years but remain marked by limited sample sizes, narrow developmental levels, restricted items, unclear psychometric strength across multiple demographic groups, and lack of integration with key student education contextual factors such as academic mindset and social emotional learning. The present study evaluated a comprehensive measure of aspects of school climate, academic mindset, and social emotional learning in a sample of 105,379 diverse students (M age = 13.47 years; SD = 2.47). The 9-factor structure of the School Climate and Academic Mindset Inventory was supported via confirmatory factor analysis. A trimmed model displayed adequate goodness-of-fit for males and females, younger age groups, and European American, biracial/multiracial, Hispanic, Native American, and Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander students. The trimmed model was slightly less strong for older age groups as well as for African American and Asian American students. The scale may be useful for assessing school climate interventions, longitudinal climate patterns, and school-based algorithms of future performance, though additional validation of the scale remains necessary.

Psychometric Analysis of a School Social Climate Scale: Input Elements for the Investigation and Promotion of Well-Being

“…There is a wide range of scales for measuring the SSC; although they present good psychometric evidence, they may lack a broad theoretical basis to support the construct (Trianes et al, 2006;Gálvez Nieto et al, 2014); they may not be based on a multidimensional perspective (Benbenishty and Astor, 2005) or even those with a multidimensional perspective may fail to incorporate an important dimension, such as teacher-student relations (Wang and Degol, 2015) or the student's sense of identity with the school (Elipe et al, 2018). Although there are recent advances in measurement with a solid theoretical base (Gálvez-Nieto et al, 2020), according to Kearney et al (2020), studies regarding school climate assessment have been marked, for example, by limited sample sizes or narrow developmental levels.…”

Evaluation of the Metric Properties of the Delaware School Climate Survey – Student: A Study in a Sample of Serbian High School Students

“…The one-factor model did not fit data well, which is in good agreement with the understanding of the school climate as a multidimensional construct (e.g., Grazia & Molinari, 2020;Kearney et al, 2020). Of all the models that were tested, the seven-factor model provided the best fit to the data based on all fit indices (CFI value was above .90, the RMSEA value was less than .06, and the SRMR value was below .08).…”

Systematic and evaluative review of school climate instruments for students, teachers, and parents

“…A description of the domains evaluated by the school climate measures according to Cohen's et al model (2009) is in Table 4. The four domains of this model (safety, teaching and learning, relationships, and environment) are represented among different measures but only three instruments included all four domains (School Climate and Academic Mindset Inventory [SCAMI], Kearney et al, 2020; School Climate Measure [SCM], Zullig et al, 2010, 2015; School Climate Scale [SCS], Sudla et al, 2020). The most common domains were safety and relationships; Teaching and learning was the next most common domain and environment was the least common domain.…”