"Psychometric properties of the Classroom Assessment Scoring System (Pre-K): implications for measuring interaction quality in diverse early childhood settings" by Dan Cloney

Selected Works of Professor Ray Adams AM

Article

Psychometric properties of the Classroom Assessment Scoring System (Pre-K): implications for measuring interaction quality in diverse early childhood settings

Journal of Applied Measurement (2017)

Dan Cloney, Australian Council for Educational Research (ACER)
Dr Cuc Nguyen, University of Melbourne
Raymond J Adams, Australian Council for Educational Research (ACER)
Collette Tayler, University of Melbourne
Gordon Cleveland, Scarborough College, University of Toronto
Karen Thorpe

Abstract

The Classroom Assessment Scoring System (CLASS) is an observational instrument assessing the nature of everyday interactions in educational settings. The instrument has strong theoretical groundings; however, prior empirical validation of the CLASS has exposed some psychometric weaknesses. Further the instrument has not been the subject of psychometric analysis at the indicator level. Using a large dataset including observations of 993 Australian classrooms, con rmatory factor analysis is used to replicate ndings from the few existing validation studies. Item response modelling is used to examine individual indicator behaviour. Latent growth models are used to produce new ndings about estimating factor scores. Findings show that the CLASS exhibits stable psychometric properties within classrooms over repeated observations. Model t is improved and factor scores are more reliable when the repeated-observations made in administering the CLASS are accounted for statistically. It is recommended that researchers enforce a xed number of repeated observations to minimise bias.

Disciplines

Publication Date

2017

Citation Information

Cloney, D., Nguyen, C., Adams, R., Tayler, C., Cleveland, G., & Thorpe, K. (2017). Psychometric properties of the Classroom Assessment Scoring System (Pre-K): implications for measuring interaction quality in diverse early childhood settings. Journal of Applied Measurement, 18(3).