To Report, or Not to Report: National Survey of Student Engagement Indicators as Subscores in Higher Education Assessment

• In Event: Measurement and Assessment in Higher Education SIG (64) Paper Session 2

Abstract

Recent studies found that reporting subscores in educational testing rarely offers added value for test users (e.g., Haberman et al., 2009; Sinharay, 2010; Sinharay et al., 2007, 2010). Concerns surrounding utility of subscores—namely, that “information obtained from subscores that seems intuitively useful may not contain additional information over and above the total score” (Meijer et al., 2017, p. 2)—apply equally to assessment and evaluation in higher education. One widely adopted survey that uses subscores is the National Survey of Student Engagement, or NSSE. The purpose of this study was to evaluate whether ten NSSE subscores (or “engagement indicators”) demonstrated sufficient reliability and distinctness to support validity of interpretation and use at the individual student and aggregate college levels.

Author

• Christa Elisa Winkler, Mississippi State University