Factorial Invariance of the School Climate for Diversity Scale across Black and Latine Youth

• In Event: Advancing Socially Just and Antiracist Measures Through Mixed Methods: A Focus on Development and Validation

Abstract

As the topics of race, equity, and inclusion become increasingly threatened and politicized within the United States, it is of the utmost importance to understand how our school systems are attending to our most underserved and marginalized students. To achieve this goal, researchers must understand how students are experiencing the U.S. school system from the perspectives of the youth themselves. Efforts to gain a thorough understanding of students’ experiences require thoughtful utilization of quantitative measures. One way to accomplish this is by utilizing psychometric analyses to decipher whether measures designed to capture youth experiences are interpreted the same way across different groups of students. An analysis designed to achieve this goal is known as factorial invariance (Meredith & Teresi, 2006). When a measure is found to have strong factorial invariance, it means that it can meaningfully be applied to multiple groups of people.

Scholars must consider possible differences within groups such as race, because it highlights the unique experiences of each group. For example, while both Black and Latine youth experience forms of racialized messaging, past research finds that Black households begin discussions surrounding race and racism at younger and more frequent intervals than non-Black households (Elmore & Gaylord-Harden, 2013). Findings like this are not uncommon and emphasize the importance of acknowledging differences between racial and ethnic groups.

The current study is designed to bring scientific clarity to whether the ethnic-racial socialization dimensions of the School Climate for Diversity Scale (SCD; Byrd, 2017) is interpreted the same for both Black and Latine youth. Understanding whether the factor means are identical will honor the unique intersectional experiences of youth and ensure the measure is culturally responsive. This research was guided by one overarching research question: Do Black and Latine youth interpret the school ethnic-racial socialization subscales the same? Because past research has shown differences in racial socialization between Black and non-Black households, we hypothesized that the two groups would not meet invariance.

Using factorial invariance analysis, we examined five subscales across a nationwide sample of Black (n = 166) and Latine (n = 102) youth between the ages of 13-18 years old. The average age of the students was 14.93 (SD = 1.4). Within this dataset, 56% of the participating students identified as male while 44% identified as female. The subscales examined include Cultural Socialization (α =.88), Critical Consciousness Socialization (α = .87), Colorblind Socialization (α = .63), Mainstream Socialization (α = .79), and Promotion of Cultural Competence Socialization (α = .91).

Contrary to the initial hypothesis, analyses found that all five subscales showed strong factorial invariance and generally fit the data well for all models of invariance, with CFIs greater than .937 and RMSEA ranging from .113 to 0. Chi-squared difference tests were also utilized with the fit for all subscales ranging from strong to strict. These findings imply that the SCD measure can be utilized to accurately capture the socialization experiences of Black and Latine youth. The findings will be discussed in the context of ongoing efforts to revise the SCD using mixed methods.

Authors

• Felicia J. Gutierrez, University of Illinois at Chicago

• Josefina Banales, University of Illinois at Chicago