title: Evaluating Individual Students' Perceptions of Instructional Quality: An Investigation of their Factor Structure, Measurement Invariance, and Relations to Educational Outcomes.
abstract: Students' perceptions of instructional quality are among the most important criteria for evaluating teaching effectiveness. The present study evaluates different latent variable modeling approaches (confirmatory factor analysis, exploratory structural equation modeling, and bifactor modeling), which are used to describe these individual perceptions with respect to their factor structure, measurement invariance, and the relations to selected educational outcomes (achievement, self-concept, and motivation in mathematics). On the basis of the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2012 large-scale data sets of Australia, Canada, and the USA (N = 26,746 students), we find support for the distinction between three factors of individual students' perceptions and full measurement invariance across countries for all modeling approaches. In this regard, bifactor exploratory structural equation modeling outperformed alternative approaches with respect to model fit. Our findings reveal significant relations to the educational outcomes. This study synthesizes different modeling approaches of individual students' perceptions of instructional quality and provides insights into the nature of these perceptions from an individual differences perspective. Implications for the measurement and modeling of individually perceived instructional quality are discussed.
authors.affiliation: Faculty of Educational Sciences, Centre for Educational Measurement at the University of Oslo (CEMO), University of Oslo Oslo, Norway.
authors.forename: Ronny
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Scherer
authors.affiliation: Department of Teacher Education and School Research, Faculty of Educational Sciences, University of Oslo Oslo, Norway.
authors.forename: Trude
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Nilsen
authors.affiliation: German Institute for International Educational Research Berlin, Germany.
authors.forename: Malte
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Jansen
keywords: PISA 2012; bifactor models; classroom perceptions; exploratory structural equation modeling; instructional quality; measurement invariance