Page 48 - Secondary school students’ university readiness and their transition to university Els van Rooij

- Metacognitive learning (12 items): metacognitive self-regulation.
- Self-regulated learning (12 items): time and study environmental
management and e ort regulation.
e MSLQ subscales peer learning and help seeking were not used. In addition to
translation to Dutch (via the back-translation procedure by a near-native speaker), 2 some minor modi cations had been made to the MSLQ items: we made sure
all items were referring to students’ general habits of studying, regardless of the
subject or course. e reason for this is that we were interested in students’ use of
learning strategies in general, not in a speci c course. All items were measured on
a 7-point Likert scale, where students had to indicate the extent to which the item
was applicable to their way of learning. Reliabilities of three of the four learning
strategies were su cient (α > .70), but in the case of surface learning borderline
(α = .60).
In Chapter 7 we only used self-regulated learning.
2.2.7 Academic adjustment
Academic adjustment was measured in the studies in Chapters 5 and 7 with the academic adjustment subscale of the Student Adjustment to College Questionnaire (SACQ; Baker & Siryk, 1989). In Chapter 5 all four subscales were used; in Chapter 7 only the total academic adjustment scale. e total scale consists of 24 items. e four subscales are: motivation (6 items), application (4 items), performance (9 items), and environment (5 items). Items were measured on a 5-point Likert scale. Reliabilities were all su cient.
2.2.8 Satisfaction with the chosen degree programme
In the study for Chapter 7 we measured students’ satisfaction with the degree programme they had chosen and started. Two items were used: “I am satis ed with the programme I chose” and “Looking back, I wish I had chosen a di erent degree programme” (reverse coded). Cronbach’s alpha was .80.
2.3 Analyses
2.3.1 Structural equation modelling
Structural equation modelling with Mplus has been used in Chapters 4 and 7. In both studies, structural models, with expected relationships between the latent
Method
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