Analysis, interpretation of results and refinement: Academic functioning and well-being assessment

• In Event: Roundtable Session (Tuesday II)
  In Refereed Round-Table Session: Inside the black box of measure development: a discussion with research-practice partnerships on the development, adaptation, and testing of holistic assessments in the Middle East

Proposal

The purpose of the present study is to develop a tool measuring academic functioning and well-being that is adapted for use in emergency contexts in the Middle East. Several humanitarian organizations are working to improve students’ learning in the Middle East, but to ensure high-quality data measurement tools need to conceptualize learning skills, be contextually and culturally adapted, and the data must be appropriately analyzed and interpreted. Standardized measurement tools that are commonly used to evaluate learning programs are e.g.: General Self-Efficacy Scale, the Academic Self-Efficacy Scale, the Executive functioning questionnaire and the Motivated Strategies for Learning Questionnaire (MSLQ). These have only been proven reliable and valid in a western context and not in an emergency context with traumatized and academically underachieving school children.

The Better Learning Program (BLP) is a school based and evidence-based intervention that is designed to offer psychosocial support to students after emergencies. The Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) is implementing BLP in Palestine (Gaza and West Bank), Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, and Iraq. The BLP sessions are carried out in the school environment with the teachers trained as implementers. The implantation of the BLP program has been very successful and the school children have experienced improved functioning in all the measured outcomes.

However, many students experience a temporary reduction in their academic functioning after emergencies. The Better Learning Program 2 (BLP2) is designed to target academically underachieving students that are traumatized from war and need help improving their study skills. BLP-2 accompany BLP-1, and consist of a group intervention program that is administrated through five sessions, ten kids in each group, over five weeks. The educational goals are techniques for stress reduction, coping strategies, improving study skills and building a strong school and home relation. The BLP-2 have earlier registered high improvement in all the measured outcomes.

We are testing a measurement tool that consists of six different factors: Well-being, self-regulation, self-efficacy, hope, academic functioning and executive skills. In addition, we have included and exposure scale and the 13-item version of the Children`s Revised Impact of Event Scale (CRIES-13), that measures post-traumatic stress after stressful events. The sample of students is recruited from schools in Gaza (N=300) and the West Bank (N=300) that implement BLP2. Total sample size of 600 school students, 50/50 males and females, aged 12-15 years old. The schools are selected from a set of specific criteria. The goal being to develop a tool that measures academic functioning and well-being and is adapted to be reliable and valid in the Middle East context.

In this session we will discuss how the collected data was analyzed to check for consistency, coherence, precision, validity and, feasibility of the tool and how this information was used to revise and refine the measurement tool.

Authors

• June T. Forsburg, University of Tromso

• Camilla Lodi, Norwegian Refugee Council

• Sarah Capper, Norwegian Refugee Council

• Jon-Håkon Schultz, University of Tromsø