Establishing longitudinal factorial construct validity of the quality of school life scale for secondary students.

The purpose of this study was to establish the longitudinal factorial construct validity of the Quality of School Life (QSL) scale, which was initially designed to measure the well-being of students in Australian high schools. The items comprising the scale were based on theoretical models and existing measurement instruments concerning the domains of schooling and the quality of life experienced by adults. Three latent structure models, two reported earlier in the literature and one new in this context, were reviewed and their merits compared on the basis of two sets of empirical data comprising, respectively, 5932 secondary students in the 1993 cohort and 8269 secondary students in the 1999 cohort using confirmatory factor analysis procedures.

Rasch models overview.

This overview of Rasch measurement models begins with a conceptualization of our continuous experiences that are often captured as discrete observations. It goes on to discuss the properties that are require of measures if they are to transcend the occasion in which they were collected, and concludes with a discussion the spiral of inferential development. This is followed by a discussion of the mathematical properties of the Rasch family of models that allow the transformation of discrete deterministic counts into continuous probabilistic abstractions on which science is based.

Dimensionality and construct validity of School Development Expectation Scale for secondary students.

This study aims to establish the dimensionality and construct validity of the School Development Expectation Scale for use with Year 12 students. The scale is made up of five expectation subscales in the vocational, academic, personal, social and religious development domains. The validation sample comprised 8,310 Year 12 students from 70 schools.