Previous reports focused heavily on the scale construction efforts necessary to devise instruments which would be adequate to test the relationships postulated by the investigators' theoretical model. During the past year we have been involved in studies testing the factorial, concurrent, predictive, and construct validity of four scales. These are: (a) A perceived competence scale for children, which is an alternative to existing measures of self-esteem. This measure provides a profile of a child's perceived competence across three skill domains, cognitive, social, and physical skills, (b) A measure of a child's intrinsic versus extrinsic motivational orientation in the classroom, (c) A measure of children's perceptions of control, in three competence domains, cognitive, social, physical, (d) A measure of children's school concerns and anxieties in four areas, academic performance, peer esteem, teacher acceptance, and school conduct. This year we have focused on the developmental course of each of these constructs as well as their interrelationships. In addition to higher-order factoring, we have begun to test more causal predictions, employing structural equation models. Finally, we have discovered that our measures have great utility to those in more applied fields, and thus have become involved in program evaluation, use of the measures as indivdual diagnostic indicators, as well as other educational and mental health concerns.
| Bouchey, Heather A (2004) Parents, teachers, and peers: discrepant or complementary achievement socializers? New Dir Child Adolesc Dev :35-53 |
| Connell, J P (1985) A new multidimensional measure of children's perceptions of control. Child Dev 56:1018-41 |
