Scale Creation

Two different types of combinations of responses can be distinguished:

Simple indices - Constructed through the arithmetical transformation or recoding of one or more items, such as ratios, averages, or binary indicators:

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  • Ratios and recoded variables
    • Student-teacher ratio
    • Ratio of teachers and personnel for pedagogical support
    • Ratio of teachers and school administrative or management personnel
    • School location in urban or rural areas – collapsed variable
    • Principal age groups – categorized variable
    • Teacher age groups – categorized variable
    • Number of enrolled students – categorized variable
  • Simple categorization indices
    • School autonomy
      • School autonomy for staffing
      • School autonomy for budgeting
      • School autonomy for educational policies
      • School autonomy for instructional policies
      • School autonomy for curriculum
    • School resources
      • Lack of pedagogical personnel
      • Lack of resources
      • Lack of material resources

Scales

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  • The underlying variables are intended to measure the constructs that are unobserved.
  • Scales were operationally defined by observable items and constructed using complex scaling procedures.
  • Typically, scale score estimates represent latent traits derived from the scaling of dichotomous or polytomous (e.g., Likert-type scale) items using latent trait methodology.
  • Scale-item statistics such as item frequencies, number of musings, corrected item-total correlations were used to initially evaluate the quality of the scale items across all countries/sub-national entities.
  • A reliability coefficient (omega) was used as the measure of scale reliability.
  • Exploratory factor analysis (EFA) was used in certain cases to evaluate the dimensionality of the scales.
  • Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) with multiple-group confirmatory factor analysis (MGCFA) was used to validate the constructed scales with regard to its measurement invariance level (e.g., configural, metric, and scalar).
  • CFA was used to construct the scale scores.

List of Background Scales

Teacher scales

• Teacher motivation and perceptions
  • Personal utility motivation to teach
  • Social utility motivation to teach
  • Perceptions of value and policy influence
• Instructional practices
  • Teaching practices, composite
  • Clarity of instruction
  • Cognitive activation
  • Classroom management
• Professional practices
  • Teacher cooperation, composite
  • Exchange and coordination among teachers
  • Professional collaboration in lessons among teachers
• Feedback and development
  • Effective professional development
  • Needs for professional development in subject matter and pedagogy
  • Needs for professional development for teaching in diverse environments
  • Professional development barriers
• Self-efficacy
  • Teacher self-efficacy, composite
  • Self-efficacy in classroom management
  • Self-efficacy in instruction
  • Self-efficacy in student engagement
• Job satisfaction
  • Satisfaction with target class autonomy
  • Job satisfaction, composite
  • Job satisfaction with work environment
  • Job satisfaction with profession
• Work stress and well-being
  • Workplace well-being and stress
  • Workload stress
  • Student behavior stress
• School climate
  • Teachers’ perceived disciplinary climate
  • Teacher–student relations
  • Participation among stakeholders
• Innovation: Team innovativeness
• Equity and diversity
  • Self-related efficacy in multicultural classrooms
  • Diversity practices

Principal scales

• Job satisfaction
  • Workload stress
  • Job satisfaction, composite
  • Job satisfaction with work environment
  • Job satisfaction with profession
• School leadership
  • School leadership
  • Participation among stakeholders
• School climate
  • Academic press
  • Stakeholder involvement, partnership
  • Lack of special needs personnel
  • School delinquency and violence
• Innovation: Organizational innovativeness
• Equity and diversity: Diversity beliefs