Abstract
The Student Risk Screening Scale—Internalizing/Externalizing (SRSS-IE) was developed to screen elementary-aged students for Emotional and Behavioral Disorders (EBD). Its use has been extended to middle schools with little evidence that it measures the same constructs as in elementary schools. Scores of a middle school population from the SRSS-IE are analyzed with Multilevel Confirmatory Factor Analysis (MCFA) to examine its factor structure, factorial invariance between females and males, and its reliability. Several MCFA models are specified, and compared, with two retained for further analysis. The first model is a single-level model with chi-square and standard errors adjusted for the clustered nature of the data. The second model is a two-level model. Both support the hypothesized structure found in elementary populations of two factors (Externalizing and Internalizing). All items load on only one factor except Peer Rejection, which loads on both. Reliability is estimated for both models using several methods, which result in reliability coefficients ranging between .89-.98. Both models also show evidence of Configural, Metric, and Scalar invariance between females and males. While more research is needed to provide other kinds of evidence of validity in middle school populations, results from this study indicate that the SRSS-IE is an effective screening tool for EBD.
Degree
PhD
College and Department
David O. McKay School of Education; Educational Inquiry, Measurement, and Evaluation
Rights
http://lib.byu.edu/about/copyright/
BYU ScholarsArchive Citation
Wilcox, Matthew Porter, "Evidence for the Validity of the Student Risk Screening Scale in Middle School: A Multilevel Confirmatory Factor Analysis" (2016). Theses and Dissertations. 6599.
https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/etd/6599
Date Submitted
2016-12-01
Document Type
Dissertation
Handle
http://hdl.lib.byu.edu/1877/etd9025
Keywords
Student Risk Screening Scale, universal screening, emotional and behavioral disorders, reliability, validity, multilevel modeling, structural equation modeling
Language
english