University student engagement inventory (USEI): Psychometric properties

Abstract

Academic engagement describes students' investment in academic learning and achievement and is an important indicator of students' adjustment to university life, particularly in the first year. A tridimensional conceptualization of academic engagement has been accepted (behavioral, emotional and cognitive dimensions). This paper tests the dimensionality, internal consistency reliability and invariance of the University Student Engagement Inventory (USEI) taking into consideration both gender and the scientific area of graduation. A sample of 908 Portuguese first-year university students was considered. Good evidence of reliability has been obtained with ordinal alpha and omega values. Confirmatory factor analysis substantiates the theoretical dimensionality proposed (second-order latent factor), internal consistency reliability evidence indicates good values and the results suggest measurement invariance across gender and the area of graduation. The present study enhances the role of the USEI regarding the lack of consensus on the dimensionality and constructs delimitation of academic engagement.

University Student Engagement Inventory (USEI): Transcultural Validity Evidence Across Four Continents

“…The three-factor scores of the USEI are valid and reliable measures that can be combined to form a reliable total score of academic engagement. These results are in accordance with previous findings of Portuguese students (Costa et al, 2014;Maroco et al, 2016;Sinval et al, 2018) and with our first hypothesis (H1) with students from nine different countries and regions.…”

“…The α values were >0.70 for all factors and >0.8 for the total scale ( Table 4). The hierarchical omega statistic for the total scale was high (ω h = 0.88), which gives support to a secondorder factor as observed elsewhere (Maroco et al, 2016;Sinval et al, 2018). This result provides evidence of acceptable internal consistency reliability.…”

“…The emotional and cognitive factors can also be improved, as items 6 and 11 have low factor loadings (0.4 < λ < 0.5). Item 6 has previously been identified as a problematic item in this scale as it is the only reverse-coded item (Sinval et al, 2018). It can be positively worded as "I feel very accomplished at this school" because reversed items may have reduced sensitivity (as demonstrated by Maroco et al, 2014) for the efficacy dimension of the MBI-SS.…”

“…Each of the three first-order factors is composed of five items. The USEI has previously been assessed for factorial validity and reliability (Maroco et al, 2016) and measurement invariance across genders and areas of study (Sinval et al, 2018) but only for Portuguese speaking students. In this study, we used five versions of the scale: Portuguese (for Portugal, Brazil, and Mozambique), English (for the United Kingdom, the United States, and Finland), Serbian (Serbia), Italian (Italia), and simplified Chinese (Macau SAR and Taiwan; see Supplementary Data Sheet 1).…”

“…Content-related validity evidence based on response processes of the behavioral, cognitive, and emotional as dimensions of academic engagement was evaluated with a focus group of psychologists and university students in the original proposal of Maroco et al (2016). The USEI has been shown to present appropriate validity, reliability, and measurement invariance across gender and the area of graduation using confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) (Sinval et al, 2018). Although measurement invariance was found across genders and area of studies, no studies so far have analyzed the USEI's measurement invariance across countries.…”