Page 46 - Secondary school students’ university readiness and their transition to university Els van Rooij

1996). e rst version of our questionnaire consisted of 32 items. In the study for
Chapter 4 we tested that questionnaire. An exploratory factor analysis revealed
four factors that we described as follows: behavioural engagement (8 items);
a ective engagement: liking school (5 items); a ective engagement: valuing school
(6 items); and commitment (4 items). Reliabilities were around or above .80 2 (behavioural engagement: α = .87; a ective engagement: valuing school: α = .80; commitment: α = .78), except for a ective engagement: liking school (α = .69). In
Chapter 4, we chose to only use behavioural engagement, as the literature showed that this type of engagement was most strongly related to educational outcomes.
In Chapter 5, only the 23 items were used that survived the pilot test and were thus linked to one of the four factors of engagement that were found in the study for Chapter 4. Reliabilities of all engagement factors were su cient (behavioural engagement: α = .86; a ective engagement: liking school: α = .74; a ective engagement: valuing school: α = .79; commitment: α = .73), but again only behavioural engagement was used in the study.
2.2.4 Out-of-school academic activities
To measure out-of-school academic activities (Chapter 4) we used four items from the index of science-related activities used in PISA (OECD, 2007, p. 154) and added two new items. e items were academic activities such as reading about research results in books or on the internet. Students had to indicate how o en they did these activities in their spare time. As with measuring academic interest, these activities could refer to all academic elds and not only to the natural sciences. We made this explicit in the questionnaire by giving examples related to both the natural and the social sciences. Reliability was su cient.
2.2.5 Self-e cacy
For Chapter 4, we developed 15 items to measure students’ self-e cacy in studying at university. ese items were inspired by the eight items of the index of self- e cacy in science from PISA (OECD 2007, p. 135), e.g., “Recognise the science question that underlies a newspaper report on a health issue” and “Discuss how new evidence can lead you to change your understanding about the possibility of life on Mars”. Again, we rephrased the items to make sure all academic elds were covered. Items were measured on a 4-point Likert scale, where students had to indicate how well they thought they could perform the described task. We added items that were directly related to studying at university, e.g., “Studying three
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