Multicultural Validity and Equivalence in the National Survey of Student Engagement

• In Event: Innovative Outcomes Assessment Methods

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to employ strategies to determine to what extent National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE) was an equivalent measure of outcomes for first generation college students. This research drew on work in culturally responsive evaluation and multicultural validity to conduct a series of increasingly restrictive hierarchical structural equation models to establish configural, metric, and scalar equivalence. In higher education, large scale and popular measures like NSSE are used to design interventions, as indicators of quality education, and to inform policy without ensuring these measure function for the same populations they claim to support. This study critically examines these assumptions through establishing measurement equivalence.

Author

• Ciji Ann Heiser, Western Michigan University - Kalamazoo, MI