Premium
The psychological sense of school membership among adolescents: Scale development and educational correlates
Author(s) -
Goodenow Carol
Publication year - 1993
Publication title -
psychology in the schools
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.738
H-Index - 75
eISSN - 1520-6807
pISSN - 0033-3085
DOI - 10.1002/1520-6807(199301)30:1<79::aid-pits2310300113>3.0.co;2-x
Subject(s) - psychology , scale (ratio) , ethnic group , construct (python library) , internal consistency , reliability (semiconductor) , set (abstract data type) , construct validity , developmental psychology , social psychology , sense of community , school psychology , applied psychology , clinical psychology , psychometrics , physics , quantum mechanics , power (physics) , sociology , anthropology , computer science , programming language
This article discusses the development and validation of a measure of adolescent students' perceived belonging or psychological membership in the school environment. An initial set of items was administered to early adolescent students in one suburban middle school ( N = 454) and two multi‐ethnic urban junior high schools ( N = 301). Items with low variability and items detracting from scale reliability were dropped, resulting in a final 18‐item Psychological Sense of School Membership (PSSM) scale, which had good internal consistency reliability with both urban and suburban students and in both English and Spanish versions. Significant findings of several hypothesized subgroup differences in psychological school membership supported scale construct validity. The quality of psychological membership in school was found to be substantially correlated with self‐reported school motivation, and to a lesser degree with grades and with teacher‐rated effort in the cross‐sectional scale development studies and in a subsequent longitudinal project. Implications for research and for educational practice, especially with at‐risk students, are discussed.